Michael Ridpath: Amnesia

Friday 5 March 1999, Wyvis, Scotland

He heard a cry, almost a scream, cut short. Then the rapid tap of feet on floorboards.

‘Jesus Christ! What happened to you? How long have you been there like that? Oh, you poor wee man!’

The voice was Scottish, female, concern verging on panic.

He was lying on something hard. He was cold. And his head hurt like hell. He tried to open his eyes but he couldn’t.

He felt a gentle nudge on his arm. And then a hand on his cheek. Warmth.

‘You’re so cold! Are you alive, pet? Wake up! Open your eyes!’

His eyelids felt as if they were zipped shut, but he wanted to reassure the woman before panic overwhelmed her.

He forced them open. He saw a pair of tight blue jeans. And a concerned, lined face beneath short blond hair. A tattoo of a Chinese character in green ink on a collarbone.

‘Thank Christ! You are alive!’

He tried to say ‘yes’, but all he could manage was a groan.

His head hurt. A herd of elephants wearing stilettoes was performing a dance at the back of his brain.

‘You’re freezing. Stay there! I’ll call an ambulance.’

The woman disappeared from view, and he heard her voice on a telephone.

He was lying on a wooden floor. He lifted his cheek. It was sticky. Blood — he could smell it, the tang of iron, of rust.

He tried to haul himself upright, but he couldn’t. He tried harder. Somehow he pulled himself up onto his elbows, dragged himself a couple of feet across the floor, and twisted round so that his back was resting against the wall.

He was in a hallway. Above him, a steep, spiral wooden staircase, shiny with wear, curved into darkness. Next to him, a patch of dry brown spread across the floorboards. He raised his hand to his cheek, and then to the back of his skull. His head was caked in the stuff. The elephants were still dancing.

The woman returned, and squatted on the bottom step of the staircase staring at him. She was tall, long-limbed, about forty. Kind blue eyes. ‘Don’t worry. They’re on their way.’

He tried to say something. He couldn’t. He tried harder.

‘Who are you?’ he managed to croak.

The woman’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. ‘Och, you know who I am! I’m Sheila. Sheila MacInnes? From the Stalker’s Lodge?’

‘I don’t know who you are,’ he said.

Then another, more worrying question occurred to him.

‘Who am I?’

Saturday 13 March 1999, St Andrews

Clémence huddled deep into her coat against the wind threading its way through the university buildings from the North Sea, only a quarter of a mile away. One day into the spring vacation, the town was already almost empty of students. Clémence was staying on: she lived in Hong Kong, and for one reason or another, she couldn’t go back there for the holiday. She had just dropped her friend Livvie off at Edinburgh Airport to join a university ski trip somewhere in Austria. Livvie had said Clémence could borrow her car while she was away, provided Clémence picked her up the following week.

It was very nice of her — the car was a cute yellow Clio, brand new — but where would you drive to in Scotland alone in the middle of March?

She had also dropped off her boyfriend Callum, who was taking the bus back to Glasgow, where he was going to be working in a pub to earn much-needed spending money. They had only been going out three weeks, but Clémence would miss him. The university discouraged students from staying on in the vacation, and she would be virtually alone in St Andrews. She had considered asking Callum whether she could stay with him, but it was too early in their relationship for that. Maybe she would visit him for a couple of days over the weekend.

She had moped in her room in halls for an hour, and then set off for the university library. If she was going to be stuck in St Andrews, she may as well use the time productively. She had fallen behind with her work: a bit too much socializing, a bit too much drinking, way too much faffing about. Callum. Nothing drastic, nothing that a couple of weeks in the library wouldn’t sort out.

St Andrews was an ancient university of beautiful buildings, but its library looked like a car park built in the 1960s. Yet it was familiar, it was welcoming, and it was out of the wind.

She was walking through the entrance to the entry gates, when her phone buzzed. She checked the number and grinned. An American international dialling code. New York.

‘Tante Madeleine!’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Tante Madeleine was actually a great-aunt, the sister of Clémence’s long-dead French grandmother. It was Aunt Madeleine who had paid for Clémence to go to boarding school in England, and who was now paying for St Andrews. Clémence’s own parents were teachers, divorced from each other, and earning little money. More importantly, it was Aunt Madeleine who cared about her.

They spoke in French. ‘Oh, Clémence, darling, I am so worried. I need to ask you a favour, a very great favour. I hope you can help me?’

‘Of course,’ said Clémence, more worried herself by how long the favour would take to explain than what it actually was. International calls from Aunt Madeleine ate up her phone credit.

‘There is an old friend of mine, of your grandparents, called Alastair Cunningham. Have you heard of him?’

‘Maybe,’ said Clémence. ‘I think he visited us in Morocco when I was little.’

‘That’s right. Well, he knew your grandfather at university, then became a doctor and emigrated to Australia. Anyway, he came back to Britain last year and now he lives in the highlands of Scotland in a little cottage somewhere.’

‘Do you want me to visit him?’ said Clémence. ‘I can. It’s the spring vacation and I can borrow a car.’

‘It’s more than that,’ said Madeleine. ‘Last week he fell down the stairs and hit his head. It is serious: so serious he has lost almost all of his memory. He’s in Inverness Hospital, and he has no relatives still alive in this country, nor friends for that matter.’

‘Poor man!’

‘Exactly. Somehow the hospital got hold of my number, and I am planning to fly over to Scotland to organize things for him. But could you fetch him from the hospital in Inverness and take him back to his cottage and look after him? It will only be for a few days. I remember you saying that you volunteered at the old people’s home?’

‘All I do is read to them,’ said Clémence. ‘I don’t know how to look after them.’

‘The hospital say he is ready to go home,’ said Madeleine. ‘I don’t think it will be too difficult.’ She paused. ‘I know it is a lot to ask, Clémence, and I would understand if you said no. I can probably employ a nurse to stay with him, but I feel so bad for the poor man.’

Clémence did too. She had a reputation for being a bit of a ditz, partially justified, and she wasn’t confident of her ability to take care of a sick old person. But her Aunt Madeleine rarely asked her for anything — never asked her for anything — and Clémence owed the old lady so much.

Besides which, St Andrews, a town she normally loved, was already beginning to depress her.

‘All right, Aunt Madeleine. I will go and pick him up tomorrow.’

They discussed details and then Clémence hung up, a little worried about what the next few days would bring, but pleased she still had some phone credit left.