Something was missing, and after a while Grey sensed what it was. Parents who spoke well of their children usually told amusing stories about them, harmless anecdotes about childish foibles. Mrs. Kewley spoke in generalizations and platitudes, reciting what sounded like a well-rehearsed eulogy. But her enthusiasm was genuine and she smiled often at her memories, a kind woman, a nice woman.
Just after half-past twelve her husband arrived home. Grey saw him on the path outside the window, and Mrs. Kewley went out to meet him. Moments later he entered the room, shook hands with Grey and smiled in an embarrassed way.
“I’d better put lunch on,” Mrs. Kewley said. “Would you like to join us?”
“No thanks, I really must be going soon.”
The two men were left together, standing facing each other, an awkward silence.
“Perhaps you’d care for a drink before you leave?” said Mr. Kewley, still with the morning’s newspaper under his arm.
“Yes, thank you.” But the only alcohol in the house turned out to be sweet sherry, a drink Grey disliked. He accepted it with good grace, sipping at it politely. Soon afterward Mrs. Kewley returned and the three of them sat in a semicircle in the little room, talking about the firm Mr. Kewley worked for. Grey finished his drink as quickly as he could, then said he really must be getting to the station. The other two seemed relieved, but they all went through the motions of renewed invitations to lunch and grateful refusal. Grey shook hands again with Sue’s father, and Mrs. Kewley saw him to the door.
He had walked only a short distance from the house when he heard the door reopen.
“Mr. Grey!” Sue’s mother came quickly toward him. In the daylight she looked suddenly younger, more like Sue herself. “Just something!”
“What is it?” he said, smiling to reassure her, because unexpectedly she had a different look, a new urgency.
“I’m sorry—I don’t want to delay you.” She glanced back at the house as if expecting her husband to be following. “It’s Susan. How is she?”
“She’s fine—really.”
“No, you don’t understand. Please tell me!”
“I don’t know what to say. She’s happy, working hard. Enjoying life.”
“But do you see her?”
“Yes, from time to time. Once or twice a week.”
Mrs. Kewley seemed close to tears. She said, “My husband and I … well, we don’t really know Susan anymore. She writes to us, and sometimes rings us up, but
… you know …”
“She talks about you a lot,” Grey said. “You mean a great deal to her.”
“I’d love to see her again. Please tell her that.” She sobbed once but controlled it quickly, turning her head up and away, her chest heaving.
“I’ll tell her as soon as I see her.”
Mrs. Kewley nodded, then walked quickly back to the house. The door closed and Grey stood silently in the street, aware that Sue’s account of her life had oddly been confirmed. He wished he had not called.
IV
Grey had promised Sue he would phone her as soon as he was in London, but he was tired when he arrived back from Manchester. In the morning he realized he had an extra day, and decided to contact her that evening.
He felt sorry he had visited her parents, particularly as he could not tell her what he had done. Nothing had been established by the trip. Now that it was over he acknowledged that his real motive had been curiosity about her invisibility—proof or disproof, whichever might have been produced.
All he had found were clues to a difficult adolescence, now remembered by her parents in a synoptic way, partially suppressed, accounted for normally. If she had been invisible to them it was failure of vision of another kind: an inability to see her growing up and changing, rejecting her parents’ lives and background.
The pressure of domestic needs grew on him. Returning home from a trip always involved the same routine: a backlog of mail, a shortage of clean clothes, food to be bought. He was out most of the morning attending to this, and while he was around the shops he called in at the newsagent who was still delivering the tabloid newspaper every weekday morning. He loathed the paper for what it was, with its emphasis on royal visits, gossip about film stars, photographs of seminude models and salacious reporting of sex crimes, but in addition it was a daily reminder of his long stay in the hospital. Grey was told that the paper was being delivered on the instructions of the newspaper management, but he persuaded the newsagent he wanted it no more.
Returning with clean clothes and a bag of groceries, Grey discovered someone just walking away from his front door. It was a young woman with short dark hair, and as soon as she saw him she smiled expectantly.
“Mr. Grey? I thought you must be out. I was just leaving.”
“I’ve been shopping,” he said redundantly. He knew he recognized her, but not from where.
“I tried to telephone you yesterday, but there was no answer.” She saw his frown and added, “I don’t suppose you remember me … I’m Alexandra Gowers. A student of Dr. Hurdis’s.”
“Miss Gowers! Of course! Would you … like to come in?”
“Dr. Hurdis gave me your address. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
He opened the door, went in first, then tried to stand to one side to let her go in front. She squeezed past him in the narrow hallway, picking up a slip of paper. “I had left a note for you,” she said, and crumpled it.
He followed her up the stairs at his usual slow pace.
He was trying to remember what she had looked like before: his memory was of a rather severe face, heavy and shapeless clothes, spectacles, unstyled and overlong hair. She had changed since then.
He showed her into his living room.
“I ought to put this stuff away,” he said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
He moved about in the kitchen, boiling water and putting away his groceries, trying to think what he knew of her. He remembered her being there when he was hypnotized the first time. He had heard nothing from Dr. Hurdis since leaving Middlecombe.
The girl was sitting in one of the chairs when he took the coffee in.
“I was wondering if I could make an appointment to interview you sometime?” she said.
“What about?”
“I’m doing postgraduate research at Exeter University. Dr. Hurdis is my supervisor. I’m writing a dissertation on the subjective experience of hypnosis, and I’m trying to interview as many people as possible.”
“Well, I don’t think I can be much help,” Grey said. He poured the coffees, adding milk and sugar, not looking at her. “I don’t remember very much about it now.”
“That’s part of the reason I’d like to talk to you. Could you suggest a suitable time?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to talk about it.” She said nothing, stirring her coffee. Grey was feeling hostile to her, unreasonably. It was as if once you became a case history they would never leave you alone afterward. She was reminding him of what it was like to be in a wheelchair, constantly in pain and discomfort, helpless in the hands of those trying to cure you. He had thought that once he left the hospital all that would be behind him.
“So you won’t agree to an interview?” she said.
“I’m sure you can find plenty of other people to talk to.”
He noticed that the notebook she had been holding had now been returned to her bag.