The Man Who Forgot His Wife (36 page)

Ron was already waiting for me in the café when I arrived; he was seated at a booth and got up to shake my hand. He showed no hostility towards me for the trauma I had caused his daughter, even though I felt too embarrassed to look him in the eye.

‘Vaughan, thank you so much for coming.’

‘No problem at all. How’s Maddy?’

‘Well, she’s been staying in her old bedroom most of the time. Her mother puts large plates of food beside her bed, then takes them away again a few hours later …’

‘Right. So … this is a long way from home.’

‘Yes, well, Jean doesn’t like having me under her feet in the house, so I’ve been commuting to London to do a bit of research on your medical condition. I hope you don’t mind?’

Inside I felt a pang of disappointment that this was what he had come all this way to talk to me about. I had hoped he might have a message from Maddy; that he was the junior diplomat sent to make the initial overtures in a historic rapprochement.

‘I think I may have unearthed some interesting case studies,’ he said. I gave a neutral nod, hoping I did not betray my private resignation that I was going to have to indulge him here. I’d already read everything there was to read on retrograde amnesia and dissociative fugues.

At the next table a young student couple were staring at one another, too in love to have separate drinks, their two straws intimately sharing the same iced mocha.

‘Now I’m not saying that this definitely applies in your case, but it’s something I think you should be aware of.’ He indicated the pages he had photocopied from various reference books and old journals that were spread out all over the table.

‘In 1957, this businessman in New York had exactly the same thing as you. He had been under great stress as a chief executive, with millions of dollars riding on his decisions and so forth, when one day he disappeared and was found a week later with no knowledge of who he was or what he did for a living.’

‘Okay, well, I’ve not actually read about that one – but I have read about other cases like my own.’

‘Yes, and just like you this gentleman gradually regained all his memories, until he reached the stage where he could return to work, and eventually the board voted to reinstate him.’

The student took his straw out of the cup and presented the foam on the end for his girlfriend to lick off.

‘But at the moment when he returned to his old life, he suddenly remembered that he had defrauded the company. He was racked with guilt, confessed and resigned.’

‘Sorry, Ron – but I don’t quite see how that helps me now? I remembered all the worst stuff last as well. It’s not much consolation to be told that there might be even worse stuff yet to come …’

‘It’s just I think this might have some bearing on your in-discretion in Paris.’

I blushed to hear the episode even mentioned, least of all by my father-in-law. ‘Yeah, well, the funny thing is, I don’t even remember that any more. It came back to me as clear as anything on the day of our party. But it’s the first memory I’ve regained and then completely lost again.’

‘But that’s one of the symptoms!!’ said Ron, excitedly. ‘Look, this is the interesting bit. His company investigated his confession, and
it wasn’t true
. There had been no fraud; it was a false memory!’

I had never seen Ron so animated.

‘A false memory? How does that work?’

‘It’s all here. Deep down he was frightened of returning to the stressful challenges of his old life and subconsciously needed an excuse not to make that final leap.’

Only now did I look properly at the photocopied pages on the table.

‘Where did you get all this from?’

‘From books. Just books in the library here. You said you’d read everything there was to read on this?’

‘On the internet, yeah.’

‘Well, these examples are from years back. I suppose they were written up long before online medical journals and suchlike. But it really is amazing what you can find in the libraries when you look.’

‘You mean there are others?’

‘Yes – look. This was in a very interesting 1930s book about psychiatry. A local alderman in Lincoln actually confessed to killing a woman who, it transpired, was still alive.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘The sufferers aren’t pretending to have these memories; they really do believe they did these bad things.’

I hurriedly scanned the rather dense print of the photocopied book, littered with terms I half recognized. The long-dead psychiatrist’s theory was that this handful of individuals had experienced false memories for the same reason that they had suffered their original amnesia. Unable to cope with pressure or the possibility of failure, their brains had created an extreme solution: wipe all memories of the stressful life or create new memories that would make a return to that stressful life impossible.

Neither of us needed to point out that it was possible that I had imagined my affair, but I did so anyway.

‘When I told a language teacher at school the reason Maddy and I had split up again, he said that Yolande never went on the Paris trip. He said she’d already left at that point. I thought he must have got it wrong.’

‘Well, it seems like your brain has been playing tricks on you again.’

‘Oh, Ron, this is fantastic! I feel like I’ve been let out of prison. I
didn’t
have an affair!’ I declared a little too loudly. A couple of elderly ladies were passing with a tray of tea and biscuits. ‘I
wasn’t
unfaithful
to my wife!’ I told them. ‘This is incredible. Does Maddy know about this?’

‘Yes, I told her last night.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She suggested I came and told you.’

‘Right. Was she happy?’

‘She was quite thoughtful. She said, “So Vaughan may not be an adulterer …”’

‘Oh this is fantastic!’

‘“… he’s just a total nutter.”’

‘Oh.’

Nearby there was the sudden scrape of a chair. One wrong word or gesture had clearly upset the teenage girl and she stormed off as her confused boyfriend called after her.

‘Will you tell her that Yolande didn’t even go to Paris? Will you tell her that I don’t remember an affair any more? That proves my innocence, doesn’t it? Will you tell her and get her to call me?’

‘You’re not really mad at all, are you? You’re just mad about Maddy,’ he said, with a smile. ‘But then, who wouldn’t be?’

A few hours later I was seated in the hall at my children’s school, saving the empty seat beside me, though I had no idea whether it was likely to be filled. Jamie and Dillie were both appearing in the school production of
South Pacific
, and I had rushed there straight from the British Library. I had texted and emailed Maddy to say that I would leave her ticket at the desk, or that she could always go on her own the following night if she still didn’t want to see her ex-husband. The nerves of all the children on the stage were nothing compared to those of one of the adults watching them.

The band struck up the overture, and Jamie looked as though he wished his guitar was big enough to hide him completely. All the parents were looking directly ahead except one, who kept looking round. My ability to follow the storyline was further
hindered
by the director’s decision that the casting of the islanders and their white rulers must not be in line with the skin colour of his cast. I knew that Dillie’s entrance was coming up, so now I endeavoured to concentrate on one of the show’s most famous numbers. It was at that moment that a body quietly slipped in beside me and I heard Maddy whisper, ‘Hi.’

I felt a surge of elation. What better time for my wonderful wife to make an appearance than during the chorus of ‘There Is Nothing Like A Dame’. I turned to her in astonishment and exclaimed, ‘Maddy!’ so loudly that several indignant parents turned and glared at me for interrupting the song. Jamie smiled at having spotted his mother joining his dad, but immediately checked himself and focused on looking cool again. ‘You haven’t missed Dillie yet,’ I whispered.

She said nothing else to me for most of the first act, which made me anxious and distracted throughout ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’. The South London audience were particularly attuned to the musical’s tentative racial discrimination theme and there were gasps of outrage at the use of the term ‘mulatto’ even though almost no one had ever heard it before. Still, it sounded racist, and that was enough for a bit of spirited hissing.

Finally, when the girl playing Emile sang ‘Younger Than Springtime’, I leaned across and whispered, ‘So I spoke to your dad.’

I continued to stare straight ahead, but then she leaned across and whispered back. ‘Yeah, he called me immediately afterwards.’

‘Isn’t it fantastic?’

‘Fantastic? What’s fantastic about it? Thanks for Saturday by the way. I had a really lovely party.’

‘Sssh!’ said a couple of teachers in front of us.

‘Sorry!’ I mouthed to them.

It’s important for a couple to find time to talk to one another, I told myself, however hard the outside world seems determined to
make
it. I tried to establish how her father’s discovery could be anything other than positive, but every time I whispered loud enough for her to hear, heads would turn and parents would glare.

‘But it’s great news. I imagined the whole thing – it never happened …’

‘Can you please stop talking!’ came the harsh whisper from behind us.

There was a round of applause for the end of the song, so Maddy gestured to me to come outside for a minute so we could talk. At that moment Dillie made her big entrance. Just in time to see both her parents getting up and scurrying towards the exit.

The two of us stood and talked in the school corridor, beside a noticeboard entitled ‘My Inspiration’, where one or two teachers had controversially
not
chosen Martin Luther King. Pausing whenever we were passed by a hurrying teacher or cast member, I tried to fathom why Maddy was still so cool with me.

‘Look, I remember Yolande being at the school, but that’s it. I mean, now it’s like I hardly knew her. But I don’t understand why you aren’t pleased. I
didn’t
sleep with the French-language assistant!’ The group of teenage girls in grass skirts rushing down the corridor gave me a very strange look as they passed. In my euphoria I gestured to hug Maddy, but she did not accept the invitation.

‘So why,’ she asked accusingly, ‘did you imagine you had an affair with this Yolande woman?’

‘I don’t know – ask the neurologist! Oh, you’re not going to hold it against me that I
imagined
I had sex with another woman, are you? That’s every male in the known universe …’

‘I don’t care who you imagine you have sex with.’

‘Hello, Mrs Vaughan,’ said one of Jamie’s friends, dressed in a sailor costume.

‘Hello, Danny. The first question is, did you imagine you had sex with Yolande because you fancied her?’

‘Hello, Mrs Vaughan!’

‘Hello, Ade. Well, did you?’

‘What?! No!’

‘Really?’

‘This isn’t fair. I’ve just discovered that I’m an innocent man but with a brain that’s still playing tricks on me, and you’re giving me a hard time because of something I didn’t actually do.’

‘But did you fancy Yolande the French-language assistant?’

‘Yes, of course I fancied Yolande. Everyone did – she was gorgeous.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What’s more pathetic is that my subconscious believed that a stunning young thing like Yolande would ever have an affair with an old fart like me! It’s ridiculous – how could I have been so gullible as to believe my own brain?’

At that moment, the double doors of the hall burst open and the audience swept towards the school dining room where the catering students would be selling interval drinks and chunks of disintegrating pastry. Maddy and I went through with the rest of the crowd, feeling mortified when someone congratulated us on Dillie’s wonderful performance.

‘Very impressive set, I thought,’ said Maddy, pointedly, in earshot of the head of art.

‘So are you going to come home?’ I demanded. ‘Are we going to be a whole family again?’

‘And the costumes! What a lot of effort must have gone into that.’

‘Maddy – come home with me, Jamie and Dillie tonight. They’ve really missed you. I miss you.’

‘Do you want an orange squash?’

‘No, I do not want a bloody orange squash. You were all set to give our relationship another go, we made a big public thing of it, until I tried to be honest about something that had happened in the past. Well, now you’ve got the best of both worlds: I
wasn’t
unfaithful, but you know I’d tell you if I had been.’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘It
is
as simple as that. You walked out because I had an affair. Now it turns out I didn’t have an affair. So surely at that point you just come back again—’

‘Didn’t Dillie look fantastic up there? You must be very proud,’ said a teacher I didn’t recognize.

‘Oh yes, she loves performing. Thank you!’

‘And Jamie in the band as well! What a great night for the Vaughan family!’

‘Well, let’s see how it turns out …’ I said, more pointedly than I had intended.

‘It such a great musical, isn’t it?’ said Maddy, grateful that the teacher was still there. ‘Great songs!’

‘Oh yes, wonderful songs.’

‘Yeah, tell me, Maddy, which number do you prefer?’ I asked. ‘“I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” or “I’m In Love With A Wonderful Guy”?’

The teacher hovered politely to see the outcome of this interesting question.

‘Oh, I’d say the best song is yet to come. “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”.’

‘Good answer!’ said the teacher.

Other families we half knew came and joined us, and I was frustrated that I didn’t get another chance to talk with her before the second act. Madeleine seemed to be deliberately chatting with another mother as we returned to our seats, and stubbornly refused to talk about our future happiness throughout ‘Happy Talk’. Finally, during the applause, I grabbed my opportunity.