Neither of them was sleepy, and after a while Sue left the bed and made some tea for herself and took a can of beer from the fridge for Richard. Because the room was chilly in spite of the electric heater, she pulled on a sweater and sat facing him while he propped himself up against the pillows.
“You never did redecorate this place,” she said, looking around at the room in the low light from the bedside lamp. “You said you were going to.”
“Did I? I don’t remember that.”
“You said you’d put up some wallpaper. Or paint the walls a better color.”
“Why? They look all right to me.”
She smiled at him, half sitting, half lying, the beer can held in his fingers. There was a pink latticework of graft tissue around his neck and shoulder.
“Don’t you remember this?” she said.
“Have we talked about this before? The color of my walls?”
“You said you had regained your memory.”
“I have, but I can’t remember every tiny detail.”
“This isn’t a detail.”
“But it can’t matter, Sue!”
“How many more tiny details have you forgotten?” She said the words, not thinking of the warning from Dr. Hurdis until too late. And not thinking either of her own resolve to let the past lie.
“The main thing was for me to remember you. That’s all that counted.”
“We’ve got to put the past behind us.”
“I can’t, because I fell in love with you then and I want to remember how.”
She felt again the familiar perverse excitement of their previous affair, knowing how dangerous it was to go back, yet still fatally drawn to it.
She said, “I just want to start again.”
“That’s what I want too. But remembering how we met, what we did together, that’s crucial to me.”
“You’ve got to let it go.” He had already finished the beer, and he put the empty can on the tray she had brought for herself. “Do you want another?” she said.
“I’ll get it.”
“No, stay there.”
She walked into the kitchen and took two more cans from the fridge. She had had to get away from him for a moment, because she felt the rapture in her, the risky thrill of wanting to try again. She stared blankly into the interior of the fridge, holding on to the open door, feeling the refrigerated air circulating down and around her naked legs. Maybe she was fooling herself to think they could be together without the glamour to link them. It had always been the condition of them, intrinsically fascinating. Richard had lost the glamour, or it had been forced out of him by the shock of his injuries; would knowledge of it now restore him to her?
She closed the fridge, went back to the bedroom. She put the two beer cans on the table next to him and sat again on top of the bed, crossing her legs and pulling down the front of the sweater into her lap.
She said, “Do you remember everything about me?”
“I thought I did. You’re making me wonder.”
She moved closer to him and took his hand. “You haven’t really got your memory back, have you?”
“Yes I have. Most of it … the important events. I remember that you and I fell in love, but you had a boyfriend called Niall who wouldn’t let you go, and in the end he split us up. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”
“That was the result, yes. Maybe that’s how you remember it now.”
“I remember being with you in France.”
That startled her. She said, “But I’ve never been to France. I’ve never even been out of Britain. I don’t have a passport.”
“That’s where we met … in France, on a train going to Nancy.”
“Richard, I’ve never been to France.”
He shook his head and drank more of the beer. “I’ve got to have a piss.”
With some caution he swung his legs out of the bed, then limped from the room. She stared after him, trying to understand. He left both doors open, and while she waited she could hear him in the bathroom. After the toilet flushed there was just the sound of the water. At last he came back into the room, and returned to his position leaning on the pillows.
“Is that true—you’ve never visited France?” he said.
“I’ve never lied to you, Richard.”
“All right, then where did we meet?”
“Here in London. A pub in Highgate.”
“That can’t be true!”
He had closed his eyes, and turned his face to the side. She felt a sudden fright, thinking how unqualified she was to cope with something like this. The doctor had been right: he had been discharged too soon; his memory was permanently affected. She looked at his scarred body, his trunk and arms not only stouter than before, but weaker too through lack of exercise. Was she wrong to challenge his memories? Were they as valid in their own way as hers? Why should he think they had met in France? It was a shock to learn this, something she could not even begin to work out.
All she knew was her own truth, the one dominant influence on her, and, in the end, on him.
She said, “Richard, do you remember the glamour?”
“Not that again!”
“So it means something to you. Do you remember what it is?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know!”
“Then I’ll show you.”
A decision made, and she scrambled away from the bed, charged with purpose. The rapture of their past together had fixed itself on her, and she knew everything had to wait until this was settled. It was their condition.
“What are you doing?” Richard said.
“I want something bright-colored. Where do you keep your clothes?”
“In the chest of drawers.”
But she already had one of the drawers open and was hunting through it. Almost at once she found a woolen sweater, a rich royal blue. She pulled it out. He must have used it for jobs about the house, because one of the elbows had frayed away and there was a smudge of dirt across the front. It gave her a strange, dangerous feeling to hold it, knowing that it was a dark color, something she would never choose for herself. It had a sexual quality, like picking a dress that was cut too low, or a skirt that was too short. She felt giddy.
“Look at me, Richard. Watch everything I do.”
She pulled off the beige-colored sweater she was wearing, and tossed it on the bed. For a few seconds she stood naked, turning out one of the sleeves of the blue sweater so she could put it on. She pulled it over her head, wrestling her arms against its weight. As it passed over her face she briefly smelled him in it, his body, overlaid with the faint mustiness of months untouched inside the drawer. She brought her head through, and pulled the sweater down over her breasts. It was too large for her, and reached to her thighs.
“I preferred you naked,” Richard said, but it was a weak joke. He was avoiding the truth of what she was about to do; he knew what was going to happen, he knew. It was too important for him to have forgotten. He blocked it in his mind, he somehow forced it out of his memory, but Sue knew he would remember again. Already he felt the same rapture. The peril of what she was doing coursed through her, exhilarating her.
“Look at the sweater, Richard.” Her voice had thickened with her excitement. “See how dark and strong it is. Can you see?”
He was staring at her, and he nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Watch the color, don’t lose sight of it.”
She concentrated, thinking of the cloud, recalling the glamour to her. Once it had always been there, but now she had to force it. She felt the cloud gathering around her.
She became invisible.
Richard continued to stare at the place she had been as she moved away, unseen by him, walking to the other side of the bed.
It was always thus, like stripping in front of strangers, like those dreams of nakedness in public places. The half-guilty surge of sexual arousal, the sweet desire of becoming vulnerable. The first time you showed your glamour was always like first sex, a sudden revelation of a new self, a sacrifice, a loss of defense. Yet invisibility was secure, a concealment and a hiding, a power and a curse. Once before there had been a first time with Richard, but because he had forgotten, because his mind had been changed, there was this second first time, and the heady, sensual abandonment was there again.
She said, “Do you remember the time you saw Niall?”
And Richard turned his head sharply, a shocked expression on his face, and he looked toward the place where now she stood, invisible to him.