I Know What I Saw

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.’

19 Sunday

It is late and the house shrouded in darkness should be enough to help me drift off, but it isn’t. There is wine in my veins but not enough to bring on sleep so I go downstairs. In the living room I see that Seb has left the turntable spinning. Then in the back of my head I remember that as a student he’d leave his record player spinning empty – something to do with the mechanics suffering more wear by being switched on and off. The smoothness of the motion throws me back and the memories come. All at once. Sheets of them.

It was after the fight with Grace. We sat on our bench at the Horniman and started again. Something had shifted in our relationship and we began to like each other again. At first we went for walks again in the Horniman grounds. Then later we explored more and more of London. We shopped in markets on cobbles behind Borough. We hung around Soho cafés and Whitechapel bagel shops and on hot summer nights we’d chew through hot salt-beef and rye. We went like tourists to Greenwich to see where Mean Time started. Every weekend gave us another chance to both escape and dive into the world. When I remember it now, I remember it imperfectly, memory filtering out the flies and grit of ordinary happy life. When I remember how we attacked our new lives, I see only the stylised memory. Diving into the waves and always coming up glistening. Camden Market, Portobello Road, St Paul’s Cathedral.

It wasn’t long before we began to look for a real home. Not the rented extravagance that we’d been living in near work, but something we could bed our roots into. Something that was capable of anchoring us, harbouring us, together.

Money was no object, or no obstacle at least. Work was so good at that time that it’s hard to explain to people who weren’t there to see it, just how idiotic it was. We had so much spare cash that it was unthinkable that we wouldn’t just buy something outright. So, we began to save. At first just a slice of extra cash diverted into a savings account. But then, after the first few thousand pounds, the lunacy of it hit us.

‘Well, what else shall we do with it? I’m not sticking it into one of your funds,’ Grace said, over takeaway Chinese food one evening. She was sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Ra-ra skirt. Black tights. Her hair shining a clover-honey blonde in the low light. She touched her shell pendant absently.

‘Not the stock market. I’m not saying that, but the market’s about to become quite volatile. That’s what the modelling is telling us at any rate.’

‘What, then?’ she said, rubbing her chopsticks against each other to remove the splinters.

‘Maybe vary the portfolio a bit?’ I said. ‘We could take a selection of low-risk bonds maybe and you know, let the money work.’