There were other jobs open to him. The BBC and Independent Television News were also changing over to electronic news gathering, and even though he was offered a film job with ITN he realized that in the end the same problem would arise. Another job offered to him was with an industrial documentary unit, but he had cut his teeth on news filming and it was never a real alternative.
The solution came when the agency unexpectedly lost its contract with the American network. Staff had to be made redundant, and Richard Grey volunteered himself. He had no particular idea in mind—simply took the redundancy money, intending to use it to buy time to reconsider his career. In the first month he went on a holiday to the States, then returned to his flat in London to plan what to do next.
He was not short of money. He had bought his apartment outright with his father’s money, and the redundancy lump sum would last at least a year. Nor was he idle, because he was given occasional freelance work.
But then there was a gap.
His next memories were fitfuclass="underline" he was in intensive care at Charing Cross Hospital in London, surviving on a ventilator, undergoing a series of major operations, in pain and under sedation. After this there was an agonizing journey in an ambulance, and ever since he had been at Middlecombe Hospital, convalescing on the South Devon coast.
Somewhere in the gap in his life he had been in a London street, where a car bomb had been planted outside a police station. It exploded while he was passing. He suffered multiple burns and lacerations, back injuries, fractures of pelvis, leg and arm, and ruptured internal organs. He had nearly died.
This was the extent of his memories on the day Susan Kewley came to see him, and she nowhere fitted into them.
IV
There was a conflict of medical opinion about Grey’s amnesia, and for Grey himself this was complicated by a conflict of personal opinion.
He was being treated by two men at the hospitaclass="underline" the psychologist James Woodbridge, and a consultant psychiatrist called Dr. Hurdis.
Grey disliked Woodbridge, because he found him high-handed and often remote, but he took a line that Grey found acceptable. Woodbridge, while acknowledging the traumatic nature of the injuries, and the effects of concussion, believed that retrograde amnesia could also be psychologically based. In other words, that there were additional events in his life, unconnected with the explosion, which Grey was now repressing. Woodbridge believed that the memories of these should be coaxed out gently by psychotherapy, and that the benefits of using other techniques to open up the memories would not be worth the risks. He thought that Grey should be rehabilitated gradually, and with a return to normal life he would be able to come to terms with his past, his memory returning in stages.
On the other hand, Dr. Hurdis, whom Grey actually liked, had been pressing him in a direction he tried to resist. Hurdis believed that progress with orthodox analytical psychotherapy would be too slow, especially where organic loss of memory was involved.
Against his personal feelings, Grey had so far responded better to Woodbridge than to Hurdis.
Until Susan Kewley’s arrival, Grey had not been too concerned about what might actually have happened in the weeks he had lost. What worried him more was the sense of absence, a hole in his life, a dark and quiet period that seemed forever remote from him. His mind instinctively shied away from it, and like the sore places in his body he had been trying not to use it.
But Susan Kewley had come to him from out of the absence, unrecognized and unremembered. She had known him then, and he had known her, and now she was awakening in him the need to remember.
V
In the morning, when Richard Grey had been bathed and dressed, and was waiting in his room for news of Susan’s arrival, Woodbridge came to see him.
“I wanted to have a quiet word with you before Miss Kewley gets here,” Woodbridge said. “She seems to be a very pleasant young woman, don’t you agree?”
“Yes,” Grey said, suddenly irritated.
“I wondered if you had any memory of her.”
“None whatsoever.”
“Not even a vague feeling that you might have seen her somewhere?”
“No.”
“Did she tell you anything about what happened when you knew her?”
“No.”
“Richard, what I’m getting at is that you might have had some kind of row with her, and afterwards perhaps dealt with it by trying to bury the memory. It would be perfectly normal to do so.”
“All right,” Grey said. “But I don’t see why that matters now.”
“Because retroactive amnesia can be caused by an unconscious wish to banish unhappy memories. I think you should recognize this.”
“Is it going to make a difference?”
“Seeing her now could deepen your unconscious wish to block her.”
“It didn’t yesterday. It deepened my wish to know her better. It just seems to me that she might be able to remind me of things I can’t remember by myself.”
“Yes, but it’s important that you accept she is not going to provide you with the solution on her own.”
“But surely it can’t hurt?”
“We’ll have to see. If you want to talk to me afterwards, I’ll be here for the rest of the day.”
Grey remained stubbornly irritated after Woodbridge had left. It seemed to him that there was a subtle but definite distinction between his private life and his presence in the hospital as a patient. He sometimes thought that his amnesia was seen as a professional challenge by the people who were treating him, something unrelated to his real life. If Susan really had been his girlfriend, their knowledge of each other was presumably intimate and deeply personal. Woodbridge’s questions intruded on this.
A few minutes after Woodbridge left, Grey took the book he was currently reading and went out of his room and along to the elevator. He propelled himself out to the terrace and moved to the far end. This was not only some distance away from the other patients, but gave him a vantage point over most of the gardens and the drive leading to the visitors’ car park.
The weather was cool and gray, with low clouds moving in darkly from the northwest. The sea was normally visible from the terrace, glimpsed through trees, but today there was a dulling haze over everything.
He settled down to read, but the wind was blustery and after a few minutes he called a steward and asked for a blanket. After an hour, the other patients went inside.
Vehicles arrived at intervals, nosing their way up the turning incline into the steep tarmacadamed drive. Two of them were ambulances, bringing new patients; there were several tradesmen’s vans, and a number of cars. With the arrival of each of these, Grey’s hopes rose and he waited excitedly for her to appear.
It was impossible to concentrate on his book, and the morning passed slowly. He felt cold and uncomfortable and, as midday approached, more and more resentful. She had promised, after all, and must have known what the visit would mean to him. He started to invent excuses for her: she had had to hire a car and there had been a delay; the car had broken down; there had been an accident. But surely he would have heard?
With all the helpless egocentricity of the invalid, Grey could think of nothing but this.
The time drew near to one o’clock, when luncheon was served and he would be taken into the dining room. He knew that even if she arrived in the next few minutes they could only have a short time together; at two he had to go for physiotherapy.