With the approach of evening there had been a marked increase in the homeward flow of cars, their occupants scrutinising him in mechanised relays, but he maintained his vigil in the open until Leila’s cherry-coloured mini, winking and slowing, separated itself from the other traffic. She saw him and began to raise one hand as the car disappeared between the brick piers of the house’s front entrance. Redpath walked to the gateway, but remained outside the property line while Leila got out of the car. She closed the door, straightened up and shook out her hair in one fluid movement which struck Redpath as being peculiarly aristocratic, and which intensified his yearning to be with her.
Lady Leila, he thought. Pardey was right, though he didn’t know it. Lady Leila! If you’ll marry me I’ll even learn to play tennis and order Tanqueray’s-and-tonic…
“John Redpath!” Leila’s face showed both exasperation and concern as she came towards him. “Where have you been all day?”
He smiled. “They seek him here, they seek him there.”
“Why didn’t you show up after lunch? Henry was ever so worried about you.”
“I can imagine,” Redpath said dryly.
“He telephoned Frank Pardey.” Leila’s gaze was direct, easily penetrating his manufactured nonchalance.
“So you’ve heard all about the empty house.” He looked down and repeatedly kicked a small weed which was growing in a crack in the pavement, reducing it to a wet green strand which refused to be uprooted. “I’m supposed to have lost an entire day. Careless of me, wasn’t it?”
“It’s terrible for you, I know, but at least Henry is now convinced that Compound 183 is too dangerous to go on with in its present form.”
“Henry is way behind the times,” Redpath said, shaking his head as he obsessively pursued the sliver of vegetation with his foot. “It’s no longer a question of drags or hallucinations or side-effects. You see, I know that all those things I said happened yesterday actually did happen. There’s no doubt or question about it—I know they happened.”
Leila placed a sandalled foot over the remains of the weed, causing him to meet her gaze. “You have to face up to the evidence, John. For your own good.”
“Evidence? You mean these new trousers and shirt I didn’t have yesterday morning?”
“You could have bought them.”
“I only had about three pounds in my pocket and I’ve still got most of that.”
“That’s not what I mean by evidence,” Leila said, sadly but firmly. “You might simply have taken the clothes, or you might have got them some time previously.”
“So my whole past goes down the drain, does it? Maybe I haven’t actually got a past. Maybe I’m something they grew in a vat and programmed with fake memories.”
“Please, John.” Leila placed a restraining hand on his arm. “Would it help you to know that Henry and I went up to Raby Street this afternoon and looked at the house for ourselves? We didn’t simply accept Frank Pardey’s word.”
“Did you? And what did you find?”
“The place was deserted and dusty. Nobody has lived there for ages.”
“That’s a great help to me,” Redpath said bitterly. “Thanks a lot.”
Leila changed the subject by looking about her in mock surprise. “Why are we standing out here?”
“I thought it might be better. After what happened, I didn’t want to …”
“Don’t be silly,” Leila put in. “Are you coming up for coffee?”
“Yes, please.” Redpath, feeling gratified, walked with her to the outside stairwell and ascended to the first landing. Leila opened the door with a key from her purse. The sight of the familiar sitting-room where only yesterday, as far as the evidence of memory was concerned, he had committed the ultimate obscenity touched Redpath with coolness, like the downdraft from an invisible wing. He went straight through into the kitchen and began filling the electric kettle.
“Is instant all right?” he called to Leila, who had stopped to examine her mail.
“You don’t waste time making yourself at home, do you?”
“Everything’s instant these days.” Redpath plugged in the kettle and switched it on, set out two striped mugs and joined Leila in the living-room. The mere fact of her presence, her living presence, brought an upsurge of the joy he had experienced earlier, but with it came the realization that his ideas about recent “events” were very much like classical double-think. The only way he could cope with the memories was to classify them as what they proclaimed themselves to be—recollections of real people and real incidents—and yet only that morning he had been able to “remember” murdering Leila. To justify his mental processes it was necessary to become metaphysical and ascribe a vital quality of nightmare to some passages of memory, thus differentiating between them and the less remarkable sequences.
What’s the underlying logic in that? Eh? Am I claiming that my mind has set up a nightmare factory which is happy to think up horror scenes, but refuses to waste its time making up ordinary events and ordinary people? Is that a union rule? And what’s so ordinary about characters like Albert and…?
“I’ve just had a thought,” he said. “When Henry rang your tame sleuth today, did they talk for long?”
“Quite a while—Frank can’t decide whether he’s been most abused by you, me or everybody.”
“Did they discuss the fact that Wilbur Tennent, well-known figment of my imagination, is a real person with a real police record?”
“I think the conversation was too fraught for that kind of thing,” Leila said. “But Tennent is a fairly common name—and you know what Henry would say.”
Redpath nodded. “Unconscious data capture and retention. What if I went down to the cop shop and looked at all of Pardey’s photos, and was able to pick out…? It doesn’t make any difference, does it?”
“Unconscious capture and retention,” Leila supplied, “and if you want to know something else that doesn’t help—your horse came in first this afternoon.”
“What horse?”
“Parsnip Bridge. Henry was intrigued by the name when he was running your tapes through, and he checked that there really was such a horse running today. It won at seven-to-one.”
“Wilbur knew that would happen,” Redpath said in a low voice, aware of icy heavings in the darkest pools of his mind. “Wilbur can see into the future. He opens the door before you knock.”
“Don’t elaborate the fantasy, John.”
“What fantasy? I know damn all about horse racing, and I couldn’t pick a winner to save my life. I didn’t even know there was a horse called…”
“Unconscious capture and retention.”
“That’s a daft name for a horse,” Redpath growled, shaking his head in despair.
“Poor John,” Leila said, her lips quirking as she saw the expression on his face. “You’re being put through the wringer and there’s nothing I can do to help.”
“You’re helping me just by standing there,” he assured her. “God, Leila, when I thought you were dead I wanted to…” Taken unawares by the stinging tears, he turned to go back to the kitchen, but she closed with him, looking into his face with a compassion which rendered her utterly beautiful.
“It’s all right, John.” Her eyes seemed luminous. “It helps to cry.”
“Sounds like a good title for a song,” he said, trying to take refuge in his jokey brand of cynicism, but his throat closed up so painfully on the last word that he had to wince. He looked down at her, chastened, dismayed by the possibility of his beginning to sob like a child.