Michael Ridpath: Amnesia

No. No, she didn’t know that. She was jumping to premature conclusions. It must be a novel, after all, perhaps written after Alastair had visited her grandparents at Wyvis. She had no proof it was a memoir. It just... it just felt like one.

She had to find out, right away. Clémence crept up to her room, determined not to alert the old man, and dug out her address book. She picked up the phone in the hallway and dialled Aunt Madeleine’s number in New York. It was mid-afternoon New York time. Clémence had no idea of Aunt Madeleine’s routine, she just hoped she was in.

The phone switched to the answer machine, and Aunt Madeleine’s thick French accent asking the caller to leave a message.

Clémence left one, in French.

‘Aunt Madeleine. It’s Clémence. I have Alastair and I have taken him back to the cottage at Wyvis. But I need you to call me as soon as you get this message. It’s urgent!’ Then she read off the phone number from the label on the face of the phone.

What now? She could hardly ask the old man if his manuscript was true. Her question might shock him into remembering: more likely it would throw him into confusion. But she had to know.

Wait a moment. She recalled something she had spotted earlier that evening. She climbed the stairs and turned on the light in the study. She checked the little bookshelf. There, next to Stalingrad , stood a slim hardback book with a blue jacket, bearing the words Death At Wyvis on the spine. The author was Angus Culzie.

This cottage was called Culzie. The name had to be a pseudonym.

She pulled the book off the shelf. The cover showed a stag on a moor looking down at a generic loch. She carried it downstairs and opened it.

© 1974 Angus Culzie. The publisher was Woodrow and Shippe, a firm Clémence vaguely recognized.

The first page, the prologue, was identical to the manuscript.

She turned the page to the first chapter and read the first couple of paragraphs. She then checked back with the manuscript. They were identical, except that the narrator had been transformed from Alastair into Angus.

She read the rest of the chapter, and then put it down.

Never mind the Alastair and the Angus. There were other names in there she recognized. Stephen Trickett-Smith. Madeleine de Parzac, and her sister Sophie.

It was a memoir. The old man upstairs was a murderer. And he had murdered her grandmother, her beautiful grandmother!

Her heart was beating rapidly and the book was shaking in her hands. She closed her eyes. Oh, God, what should she do now? What the hell should she do now?

She was alone in an isolated cottage with a murderer. She should just leave: take the book and drive off. Call the police. Call Madeleine. Leave the old man to fend for himself.

But. But the novel or memoir or whatever it was had been published. People would have read it. Aunt Madeleine would have read it, Grandpa, the police. This was all news to her, but not to everyone else.

Yet it would be news to the old man upstairs. He didn’t know he was a killer. Or at least not yet.

She had an idea; she knew what she would do.

Monday 15 March 1999, Wyvis

The old man opened his eyes. Sunshine was leaking into his bedroom through a gap in the curtain, and the birds outside were making a racket.

He stood up, pulled back the curtain, and looked over the trees to the bare hillside of Ben Wyvis above him, still covered with snow. He scanned the ridge closest to the cottage, looking for movement, and spotted some. He grabbed the pair of binoculars he kept at the ready and focused on a small group of hinds making their way up the hill towards the high tops.

That wide expanse of moorland was known as Wyvis Forest, although there was not a tree standing up there.

He pulled back the curtain of the other window, the one facing down towards Loch Glass, a ruffled grey in the breeze. The loch was rarely smooth like a looking glass, but was often grey, for glas was the Gaelic word for grey-green. Over the top of the birch trees, and on the other side of the loch, he saw the rocky face of Meall Mòr, smeared with streaks of snow. He scanned the sky for eagles, but couldn’t see any.

But there was movement right below his bedroom window. He saw Sophie setting off down the narrow footpath into the woods.

Sophie?

It couldn’t be Sophie. Of course it wasn’t Sophie. It was that girl Clémence, Sophie’s granddaughter, and the great-niece of that woman called Madeleine.

And he didn’t know who the hell he was.

Except for a minute there, he had. He had woken up, recognized the room as his bedroom in Culzie Cottage, known his name was Alastair Cunningham, remembered the details of the surrounding landscape and...

And what else? He knew about Sophie. Sophie as a nineteen-year-old, about Clémence’s age. Seeing her by a harbour somewhere in France. Her laughing.

Then something else. Something unknown. There was something very bad about Sophie, about remembering Sophie. Dread. Cold dread clutched at his chest.

What was it?

He needed to pee.

He went into the bathroom, peed, washed his face and shaved. He noticed Clémence’s washing bag on the bathroom cabinet.

He liked her. He liked that she had an aura of familiarity, that she had a link, however tenuous, to his real life. He touched the scar on the back of his skull. It was barely sore any more.

And Clémence was absolutely right; if he was going to get over his injury, he would have to remember who the hell he was. And here, in the almost-familiar surroundings of Culzie, he felt he could do it, with her help. If there were indeed nasty secrets, then he would just have to share them with her. The embarrassment or shame would be worth it, worth getting his life back.

He stuck his head into the study. He almost knew what was in there. Together he and Clémence would attack it. After breakfast.

He dressed and went downstairs to the kitchen, boiled water, found the cafetière straight away and filled it with coffee, and laid the table for breakfast.

He saw her return up the narrow path through the woods, wearing a baggy green jumper and leggings. She looked grim.

‘Good morning!’ he greeted her, with a smile, as she came into the kitchen.

She looked at him in surprise, and then at the table in more surprise.

‘Breakfast?’ said the old man. ‘I can make you some bacon and eggs if you want.’

‘Oh, no, thank you,’ said Clémence with an attempt at brightness. ‘I’ll just make myself a piece of toast.’

‘Did you go down to the boathouse?’

Clémence looked at the old man sharply. ‘Yes. How did you know there was a boathouse down there? We didn’t see it from the road on the way here.’

‘I suppose I must have remembered it.’

The old man tried to catch Clémence’s eye, pleased with his small success, but she turned away from him to pop some bread in a toaster. They stared at it in silence. Some of Clémence’s warmth of the day before had left her.

That was understandable. Here she was, a young woman trapped in the middle of nowhere with an old git she didn’t know from Adam. Actually, he didn’t know her from Eve.

She did remind him of Sophie, although she was pleasant-looking, rather than beautiful. She was tall, a little on the plump side, with very straight dark hair, big blue eyes and clear skin. He smiled to himself as he noticed a few large freckles on the end of her nose. He counted them. Four. Sophie had had three.

‘Clémence is a nice name,’ he said. ‘Does it have something to do with your grandmother?’

‘Not really,’ said Clémence. ‘My father is half-French, as you know now, but then my mother is French also. They met in Morocco. He teaches English and she teaches French. So I suppose I am three-quarters French.’