The Missing World (11 page)

“It felt so strange being there this morning. Everything is as she left it, her notes on the desk, her swimming costume in the bathroom, yet she has no idea the place exists.”

Her hand reached towards him and her eyebrows rose. She was asking for something, if only he could figure out what. He glanced down at the jam. As a boy he had gone raspberry picking, spending whole days gathering the soft fruit, whisking away flies. “Hogarth did say one step at a time. All we’re trying to do right now is get her well again. The less stress, the better.” What else, what else could he invoke on the side of
discretion? “George and Nora,” he concluded, “will be very relieved the flat’s taken care of.”

Maud made a gesture of assent. Her hand slid back across the table. He watched warily—had he said enough?—then as she raised her glass again he risked pointing to the clock. Tempus fugit, carpe diem. They both stood up. In the hall he seized two of the suitcases and headed upstairs. Maud followed. With a rustle of plastic, she laid several carrier bags on the bed.

While he adjusted the radiator, she opened the first suitcase and lifted out a grey pullover he recognised, a blue one he didn’t. “Where do these go?”

And suddenly, in the aftermath of getting everything he wanted, he was dying to say, Maud, aren’t we making a terrible mistake? What will we do if she does remember? In most cases, Hogarth had said, the memories did come back. But Maud was lifting out neatly folded sweaters, one after another.

He abandoned the radiator and walked over to the chest of drawers. The faint odour of sweat rose from the bottom drawer. He picked up his squash clothes and threw them in the laundry basket. “Here,” he said, and went to make tea.

In the kitchen, while the kettle throbbed, he watched the sparrows fussing in the elderberry tree. He’d been wrong to attribute his anxiety wholly to Maud; it was simply easier to worry about her than about Hazel. Once, on Hampstead Heath, they had come across a holly tree with several condoms impaled on the thorns. The holly and the condom, Hazel had said, and told him about a guru in Bombay who blessed condoms because they slowed down reincarnation. Who would you like to come back as? she asked. You, he said, and she burst out laughing.

He was already in the hall when he realised he’d forgotten about Maud. He doubled back, made a second mug of tea, and carried both upstairs. “Thanks,” she said. She had emptied one
suitcase and was at work on another. “There’s not much room in the wardrobe.”

As he carried an armful of shirts to the spare room wardrobe, Jonathan allowed himself to re-enter the pool of bliss. Hazel was coming home, that was all that mattered. He noted with admiration that Maud had brought not only clothes but books, jewellery, photographs, papers. She moved a stack of newspapers from the chest of drawers. “Can you remember what she had here?” she asked.

“A hairbrush, a photo of George and Nora in the garden. Oh, good, you got it. Some earrings. Kleenex.” He paused, trying to visualise the room as it had been up until a few months ago and found that instead he was thinking of Hazel. This was what it must be like to be constantly searching for missing words, objects, experiences. Even the things he recalled—the photo, the brush—grew hazy. Had they been here; or there? No firm place to stand remained.

“Jonathan?”

“Sorry. That’s all I can come up with.”

She handed him a bag of Hazel’s toiletries and went downstairs to hang up the coats. In the bathroom he gave the taps a final polish and arranged shampoo, toothpaste, face creams. We’re doing the right thing, he repeated. She’s getting better. He was folding a towel when he caught sight of the dent in the wall beside the light cord; it dated from a fortnight after the tomato juice. No way to conceal this. You couldn’t put a picture right behind the cord. As he fitted his fist into the depression, he heard a taxi in the street outside.

None of them knew what to do. For the first half hour they sat awkwardly in the living-room, every attempt at conversation interrupted by Hazel exclaiming over some change, getting up
to look at a picture, a chair, the VCR. She was wearing a dress Jonathan was particularly fond of, dark blue and low waisted. “Why did you get rid of the old sofa?” she asked. “What happened to the red curtains?” The familiar room, rather than jogging her memory, made apparent the full force of what was missing. At one point she paused in examining the cheese plant and turned, eyes widening, to regard the four of them. “So it’s true I have lost my memory. When Hogarth told me, I didn’t really believe him. But Jonathan couldn’t have made all these changes while I was in hospital.”

This is it, he thought, glancing at his companions. If they keep silent now, they’ll never speak. Maud, after this morning’s conversation, seemed safe, and Nora was invariably discreet. George, though, with his red-rimmed eyes and his fear of mortality, was a loose cannon. Before he knew what he was doing, Jonathan was standing over him.

At the same moment Nora crossed the room. “Don’t worry, dear.” She put an arm around her daughter. “It will come back, piece by piece.”

“I’m not upset.” Hazel shrugged off her embrace. “I’m just trying to understand.”

“Can I get anyone a drink?” Jonathan said. “George, a dram?”

“Not for me,” said George. The others, too, refused. Then Maud suggested lunch and everyone seized on this as a stroke of genius. As they ate quiche and salad, Hazel was almost incoherent with pleasure. “Hospitals are awful,” she said. “And the food is a joke.”

“Some of the nurses were very nice,” said Nora. “June and Laetitia, they were lovely.”

“You know, Laetitia told me her mother was the first woman in Yorkshire to wear a bikini. Her father bought it
because he thought anything connected with the atomic bomb was a good thing.”

“Am I being dense?” said Maud. “What do bikinis have to do with the bomb?”

“That’s what I asked.” Hazel smiled. “Apparently the man who invented the bikini named it after the site of the first nuclear tests.” She tapped her fork, a bird seeking escape from the egg. “I thought it might make a good article: bombs and bikinis.”

“Ridiculous,” growled George. “Not you, dear—I mean this inventor chap.”

At the end of lunch Maud produced a surprise: a cake with
WELCOME HOME, HAZEL
written in red letters on the white icing. Hazel clapped her hands and laughed.

This was the sound, Jonathan thought, that had been missing from his life. He had a dreamy, pastoral vision of the two of them living happily ever after. Hazel would cook while he read to her; he would tend his bees and she would garden; she would write her articles and come home and tell him stories about the people she’d met and the things they’d done; she would peel away his layers of reserve and show him how to be present in the world.

Yet even as he imagined these cosy scenes, a shadow passed over Hazel. Carefully, she set aside her cake. “I think I’d better lie down.”

She rose to her feet and stood looking around uncertainly as if everything in the room, including herself, had grown strange. Nora took her arm and led her upstairs. Jonathan, George, and Maud remained at the table.

“Well,” said George at last, reaching for the knife, “no use letting a perfectly good cake go to waste.”

chapter 6

Something in his familiar landscape had shifted. Freddie paused in the hall, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, wondering if he was simply sensing the aftershock of his prolonged absence. Since meeting Mr. Early, he had left the house only briefly until today, when he had gone to help his former boss the antiques salesman move a wardrobe and stayed on for supper. But no, he thought, standing on tiptoe, listening as hard as he could, it was presence he was sensing, not absence. Had Kevin come to borrow something? Unlikely. Although they still shared keys, their easy camaraderie was gone. Had a burglar, undeterred by his lavish use of lights, paid a visit?

Then he heard a low noise from the direction of the bedroom. A sort of sobbing, it stopped and started and stopped again. Agnes. He dropped his jacket and strode across the hall. In the clothes closet, her chosen refuge, she lay panting. “Agnes,” he said, falling to his knees. “Are you okay?”

Ignoring him, she moaned and pushed herself around in a circle. She had made a nest out of what, after a moment, he recognised as his blue bathrobe. Served him right for leaving it on the floor. As she moaned again, Freddie was overcome by
panic. What the heck was he supposed to do? He thought of phoning Felicity. More usefully, he remembered Trevor. “I’ll be right back,” he assured Agnes. Her haunches quivered.

Trevor’s mother answered. “Freddie, how are you?” she said, as if he were ringing at noon, not midnight. “I hope you’ve been taking care of yourself in this bitter weather.”

“Agnes is in labour. I don’t know what to do.”

Mrs. Jackson laughed. “Fortunately she does. Where is she?” He told her that Agnes preferred the closet to the pen he’d built, and Mrs. Jackson said that was often the way, but now was the time to put her in the pen. “You want her somewhere warm and enclosed so she can’t wander off. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything will be fine.”

“How will I know if it isn’t?”

Mrs. Jackson explained that each pup was born in its own sac. Agnes would break the sac and bite the umbilical cord, thus enabling the pup to breathe. If for any reason she failed to perform these duties, then it was up to Freddie. “Snip the cord a couple of inches from the belly. And be sure that the placenta comes out after each pup. If it doesn’t, or if she’s in labour for too long with no results, that’s when you should call the vet. I usually keep a bottle of Scotch handy. For myself,” she added.

Freddie hung up feeling slightly better, although the reference to instinct was not reassuring. Agnes hadn’t had a clue about the dangers of overeating, so why should she grasp this much more complicated process? He was in the kitchen, rinsing the scissors in hot water, when he heard the click of nails and turned to see her waddling into the hall. By the time he caught up with her she was head-butting the outside door.

“No,” he said. “Good girl. We’ll go out later.”

A small, dark lump popped out and fell to the floor.

Agnes turned. She looked at the lump, then at Freddie, her amazement mirroring his own. This is it, he thought. What
had Mrs. Jackson said? Break the sac, snip the cord. “Agnes! Do what you’re supposed to.”

He dashed into the kitchen, grabbed the scissors, and ran back to where Agnes stood, still looking blank. Trying not to think about it, he knelt down, gingerly tore open the sac, and snipped the cord. The puppy made a mewling sound. Agnes bent to sniff the tiny body without enthusiasm. The placenta lay on the floor.

“Jeepers, Agnes. Don’t be such a retard.”

Carefully he scooped her up, carried her into the kitchen, and set her down in the pen. Then he went back for the puppy—so slippery he almost dropped it—and nudged it against one of Agnes’s teats. At last someone knew what to do. The puppy latched on, and Agnes began to lick it clean.

Freddie sat on the floor, wishing for the whisky Mrs. Jackson had recommended. For half an hour nothing happened. The pup nursed blindly and Agnes fussed over it. He was beginning to nod off when the panting started again. He sat up, scissors ready. Again the dark lump popped out, seemingly with no effort, but this time Agnes was all business. No sooner had it landed on the newspapers than she turned around, tore the sac, bit the cord, and began washing the newborn puppy. All Freddie had to do was guide it to the teat.

“Agnes,” he said, “you’ve got it. You’re a bona fide mom. Number two and counting. Go for it, baby.”

Within forty minutes another puppy appeared. Freddie put on
The Magic Flute
, drank tea, cheered Agnes on. “No pain, no gain,” he admonished. After the third birth came a pause. An hour passed, ninety minutes, nearly two hours. He eyed the clock, paced the apartment, studied the dog. Was Agnes through? Three was a perfectly respectable first litter, the vet had said. Cautiously he reached to feel her belly, but she
growled and snapped. A few minutes later the panting started again.

After a noticeably longer period, a fourth sac slid out. Agnes simply slumped to one side, allowing the three pups to reattach themselves. Even as he broke the sac, Freddie knew the puppy was dead.

His first thought was to get the body away from Agnes and her brood. He carried it over to the table. Under the light he studied the small being. At the sight of the neat ears, the unmistakable paws, Freddie’s eyes watered; he hadn’t seen a fatality since the day he forced that door in Dalston. With one finger he stroked the sleek fur. In the morning he would bury it near Kevin’s Brother Cadfaels. For now he wrapped it in a clean tea towel and laid it in the airing cupboard.

By the time he came back from washing his hands another surprise awaited him. Agnes was panting again, sounding bored rather than pained. A few minutes later a fifth puppy appeared. Agnes performed her duties with brisk efficiency, and somehow Freddie knew it was over. He brought her a bowl of milk, which she lapped greedily. She settled to rest and he arranged the puppies along her teats. Only when they were all suckling did he at last turn off the light and get into bed. In the darkness he held his breath. Four new beings were sharing his apartment, but they were doing so in utter silence.

“Prick,” said Hazel.

The word emerged distinctly through bubbles of saliva. For the second time since breakfast her heels were drumming the floor, fortunately in the carpeted living-room. Jonathan was doing his best to keep hold of her head and arms. Meanwhile George tried to restrain her legs; already he had let go twice.

“Hazel, love,” said Nora. “Relax. Take a deep breath and relax. We’re all right here.”

“Gooseberries. Top and tail. Top and tail.”

Her head whipped from side to side, and just as Jonathan was about to lose his grip, the seizure ended. Hazel’s limbs grew heavy, her breathing slowed. He cradled her head while Nora brought a cushion. Together they covered her with a blanket. George hurried from the room; he would be making an entry, Jonathan knew, in the notebook where he detailed each seizure, searching for a correlation with weather, exercise, diet, household events. Sometimes Nora followed him but today, no such luck. She knelt in what Jonathan regarded as his rightful place, next to Hazel. He resigned himself to the nearest armchair. “That was terrible,” he said.