“The trouble is that I can’t,” she said. “Dr. Hurdis will only let me approach patients whose sessions I’ve actually been present at, with their permission. The other people I can interview are mostly experimental subjects— volunteers, other students. Clinical cases are different, and yours is particularly interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re articulate, because of what happened under hypnosis, because the circumstances—”
“What did happen under hypnosis?”
She shrugged, picked up her coffee to sip at it. “Well, that’s what I wanted to discuss with you. I shouldn’t have troubled you.”
“No, it’s all right.” His curiosity aroused, Grey was already regretting his feelings of hostility. “We can talk about it if you wish. But look, you’ve turned up Out of the blue. I was going to have lunch in a few minutes. Let’s have something to eat, and give me a few minutes to get used to the idea.”
Ashamed of the food he bought for himself—when he was alone he survived on sandwiches, fried eggs and fruit—he suggested going to the local pub for a drink and a bar meal. As they walked slowly down the road, Grey suddenly identified the teasing memory he had of her. He remembered the moment under hypnosis when Hurdis had told him to look at this girl, and he had known she was there but had been unable to see her. It was an uncanny echo, pre-existing, of everything Sue had said.
They found the pub only half full, and had one of the tables to themselves. With the food and drink in front of them, Alexandra told him about herself. After graduating she had been unable to find a job, and so had stayed on at Exeter to do research, postponing the problem of work and aiming for higher qualifications. She was surviving on a shoestring because her grant covered only the tuition. She lived with her brother in London, and when in Exeter stayed in a house shared by a number of other students. She thought the research would probably last a few more months, but after that she would have to find a job.
Talking about this led to the subject of her dissertation. She said that the phenomenon that interested her was spontaneous amnesia—the hypnotic subject who, without suggestion from the hypnotist, could not afterward recall what had happened during the session.
“What interests me about your case is that you were being treated for traumatic amnesia, that you seemed to recover some of your memory under hypnosis, but afterward could not remember remembering.”
“That about sums it up,” Grey said. “That’s why I can’t help you.”
“But Dr. Hurdis says that you have now recovered your memory.”
“Only partially.”
She reached into her bag and produced her notebook. “Do you mind? I seem to have started interviewing you.” Grey shook his head, smiling, as she put on her spectacles and turned the pages quickly. She said, “You were in France … before the accident?”
“No, I remember being in France. I don’t think I was ever actually there.”
“Dr. Hurdis said you were pretty sure. You were speaking French, for instance.”
“That happened in later sessions, too. I think what happened was that I put together a sort of memory— something that never really occurred, but I felt that it had. At the time it was important to remember something.”
“Paramnesia,” Alexandra said.
“I know. Hurdis told me.”
“Do you remember this?” She produced a piece of paper, curled at the edges and obviously folded and unfolded many times. “Dr. Hurdis asked me to return it to you.”
Grey recognized it at once: it was the passage he had written during the first hypnotic session. Gatwick Airport, the departure lounge, the crowds of passengers. It was banal and familiar to him, and after glancing over it he refolded it and slipped it into his jacket pocket.
“You don’t seem interested,” Alexandra said.
“Not now.”
He left her briefly to buy more drinks at the bar. Another memory from their first meeting was tugging at him: as they parted, her ingenuous remark about stage hypnotists and the trick of making their subjects fail to see people’s clothes. Sue had been dominating his thoughts at the time, but for a few moments Alexandra had innocently teased him. It was refreshing now to be with a girl who was not Sue, because with Sue there was always the undercurrent of what was allowed to be said, what was admitted, what was in the background. Alexandra had the attractive quality of being uncomplicated, because he hardly knew her. He liked her seriousness and her singlemindedness, the way she intimidated him without meaning to. She was more mature now, less self-conscious. While the barman poured the drinks, Grey glanced back at her. She was looking through her notebook, her short dark hair swept behind an ear—obviously a habit from the time when it fell in her eyes.
Back at the table Grey said, “What else happened that day?”
“You told Dr. Hurdis you couldn’t remember the trance.”
“Not all of it. I know he told me to go into a deeper trance, but the next thing I knew he was waking me up.”
“All right, this is what interests me. Something rather unusual occurred, which Dr. Hurdis did not tell you. It can be explained, but neither of us had ever encountered it before, and on that day Dr. Hurdis said it would only complicate matters to talk about it.”
“What was it?” Grey said.
“It was when you were speaking French. You were mumbling, and it was difficult to hear, so we were both standing very close to you, looking directly at you. Then something happened. It’s hard to describe it exactly, but what it felt like was that it suddenly seemed to me we had finished, that the consultation was over and you had left the room. I distinctly remember Dr. Hurdis saying, ‘I’m going into Exeter after lunch, so would you like a lift?’ I put my notebook away and picked up my coat. Dr. Hurdis said he wanted to speak to one of the other doctors, but would meet me for lunch in a few minutes. We left the office together, and I followed him out of the door. As I did so I remember looking back at the chair you had been in, and you weren’t there. I’m absolutely certain of that. We walked along the corridor to the stairs, but then Dr. Hurdis suddenly stopped dead, looked at me and said, ‘What on earth are we doing?’ I didn’t know what he meant at first, but then he clicked his fingers very sharply, and this startled me. It was like being awakened out of a dream. ‘Miss Gowers, we haven’t finished the consultation!’ We hurried back to the office, and you were there, sitting back in the armchair, still in the trance and mumbling to yourself.”
She paused to take a drink. Grey was staring at the table between them, thinking about that day.
“Do you have any memory of this at all?” Alexandra said.
“No. Go on.”
“Well, Dr. Hurdis was very shaken by this. He can be difficult when he’s angry, and he started bossing me around. I took out my notebook again and tried to listen to what you were saying, but after a few seconds he pushed me out of the way. He spoke to you in the trance, telling you to describe what you were doing. It was then that you asked for something to write with, and Dr. Hurdis snatched my notebook and pen from me and gave them to you. You wrote that.” She indicated the pocket containing the slip of paper. “While you were writing, Dr. Hurdis looked at me and said, ‘When the patient comes out of the trance we must say nothing of this.’ I asked him what had happened, and he said we could discuss it later. He repeated that we must not under any circumstances talk about it in front of you. You were still writing, so Dr. Hurdis took the pen away from you and gave me back my notebook. You called out that you wanted to go on writing, and sounded distressed. Dr. Hurdis said he was going to bring you out of the trance, and again warned me not to say anything. He calmed you down, then started waking you up. You can probably remember the rest.”