I Know What I Saw

18 Saturday

‘Eaten?’ Seb says without looking up. He is in a soft, pale blue crew-neck. Just the sight of him on the sofa gives me comfort.

I shake my head. The time, blinking at me from the stereo equipment, says 21:10. As soon as the hour registers in my brain, my stomach begins churning. ‘No, I’m okay.’

He looks at me with a half-smile and taps at his mobile.

‘The local Chinese. They’re usually pretty quick,’ he says. ‘Am I remembering this properly? You like Chinese food? Or you did, back then, I mean.’

In that phrase, I am transported. Chinese food every Friday night – me and Grace. That had become our ritual, a way of creating a line of tradition to give our relationship the appearance of longevity.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Well remembered. Mabel’s idea,’ I say to Seb, who is scrolling through his phone.

‘Mabel?’ he says, looking up before remembering again. ‘Grace. That’s right. You called her Mabel.’

The fire snaps in the grate and a pocket of steam hisses from a shifting log.

‘What was that all about anyway? Mabel?’

It was months after having met her that she told me that Grace wasn’t really her name. Not her real name, but her middle name.

‘Hate my first name. Why would they give me Grace as a middle name and such an awful first name?’ she’d said.

I can’t now remember what I said in reply. The details about where we were or what we were doing elude me. In my created memory of it, we were walking somewhere beautiful, kicking autumn leaves into a slip of wind. I would have told her it wasn’t such a bad name, but now that I’m made to think about it, I can’t pull it out of my memory. It’s there on the threshold, waiting to be carried over, but I can’t quite grasp her name. How stupid of me. Is this the sleep or the kick in the head?

I called her Mabel, which wasn’t her name. It was supposed to be sweet, but she complained that it made her sound like an old dame.

Seb is perched at the edge of his seat, looking at me. Waiting. Interested.

‘Ma belle,’ I say. ‘It was supposed to be ma belle but then it just became Mabel.’

‘Ha,’ he says, then laughing softly, ‘That’s right! I remember now. She hated it.’

‘She did,’ I say.

There was something else to it too, but I can’t remember now what that was. Some clever thing about it. Maybe, some Maupassant, knowing how I am, something literary like that.

Though Seb was the literary one. Somehow, he seemed to have read everything, heard every piece of music, seen every play.

‘Do you remember that friend you had? Sri Lankan guy?’ I say, snatching it out of the past.

‘Thamba? Was he called Thamba?’

‘That’s him. And do you remember how he thought he knew everything?’ I say, smiling at the thought of it.

‘Oh, yes! The record shop. I picked up some Beethoven. And that’s when he said it.’

I lean against the chair and shut my eyes to savour the sweetness of it before releasing it.

‘It’s not even Beethoven who’s playing on it.’

We sink into silence. I sink into Grace.

‘Grace liked him though.’

‘Grace liked everyone,’ he says, smiling. ‘Xand, I’m sorry about, you know,’ he says slowly, feeling his way. ‘What happened, I mean. I should have been there.’

I wave his apology away with a smile. ‘I know, Seb. But I didn’t need you to be there. I was okay. People go through break-ups, separations.’

‘But you went through more than most people. With the – bereavement.’

I stop him with my palm out. Not Rory, I can’t talk about him. All those wheels have turned and ground what they needed to grind.

‘I can’t pretend none of it happened. But time moves in one direction, Seb. I can’t think about this now. It doesn’t serve anything.’

He nods sadly.

‘You know we went looking for you a couple of weeks after the funeral. A bunch of us. You’d been spotted up near the Horniman.’

This news takes me by surprise.

‘Why?’ I say.

‘Because you went missing, Xander. We were worried,’ he says and even now, what must be thirty years on, his brow softens in concern.

‘I didn’t go missing,’ I say. ‘I just decided I needed a break.’

‘A break? You became homeless. No, not home-less. You became a homeless person.’

The criticism lying in those words is given life so that I can’t ignore it.

‘I didn’t become a homeless person, you judgemental—’ I bring myself up short. There is anger swelling that I have to keep from flowing over.

‘I left my house,’ I say calmly. ‘I left some bricks and mortar. That’s all. I didn’t need it. Or any of the stuff,’ I add, looking around.

‘But you need it now, don’t you?’ he says. His tone isn’t unpleasant. It’s enquiring. Soft. But my hackles are up.

‘Really?’ I say. ‘I don’t think this is a good idea after all.’ I get up. Before I have made it fully to my feet, I feel his hand on my arm.

‘No. I didn’t mean that,’ he says, looking up at me. ‘I just meant. If anything, I meant to say that I was sorry. And you should stay here. As long as you need to. And I know you’ll be wondering about the Bens,’ he continues.

That word Bens was something he said before and I didn’t know then what he meant. ‘What are you talking about?’ I say. My temples send signals that they are being squeezed in a vice and I groan as the pain washes over me.

He’s silent for a while, careful of my distress. When next I look he is staring at me.

‘You’ve forgotten about the trunk?’ he says, testing the ground.

‘The trunk?’ Whatever it is he means by that, I have clearly forgotten it.

He is about to say more when the bell rings. ‘Food,’ he says brightly and gets up.

I hear him walk down the hallway and click open the door. The exchange there at the door is muted and jovial.

The word softens as I turn it over in my mind. Bens? Or is it Benz? Bends?

My memory has been crumbling for years, like it has for everyone, probably. But the concussion and the lack of sleep must have rubbed away some of the finer details. When they return, the memories come not as you would imagine, in gossamer threads, but in waves. And again, as I remember remembering, I see the madeleines, and Proust. All of that is embedded now, entwined with all remembering. It is enough to exhaust any mind.

The door slams and then Seb is rustling through the corridor with what must be bags of food.

As I enter the kitchen, he says, ‘Just grab some plates from that cupboard.’ He points with his chin as he lands the bags carefully on the table.

We eat mostly silently. He is avoiding something and I am too. But everything in the air between us is heavy and fecund and wants to be born. We eat until there are only ruins. He flicks his eyes across to me every few seconds, on the verge of saying something. Eventually he can’t help himself.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ he says, squeezing the foil edges of a container together.

I don’t look up or speak but he reads it as assent anyway.

‘How were you okay out there for so long?’

I stare at him because I can’t believe he thinks I was okay. I begin to speak when he adds, ‘I mean mentally. Psychologically. Being—’ he stops. ‘I just. I’m not sure I could have done it and survived like you.’

I think about this while he decants the empty boxes into a bag. ‘I don’t know,’ I say at last. ‘I’m not sure I have survived.’