The Sense of an Ending

That night a group of us went to Minsterworth in quest of the Severn Bore. Veronica had been alongside me. My brain must have erased it from the record, but now I knew it for a fact. She was there with me. We sat on a damp blanket on a damp riverside holding hands; she had brought a flask of hot chocolate. Innocent days. Moonlight caught the breaking wave as it approached. The others whooped at its arrival, and whooped off after it, chasing into the night with a scatter of intersecting torchbeams. Alone, she and I talked about how impossible things sometimes happened, things you wouldn’t believe unless you’d witnessed them for yourself. Our mood was thoughtful, sombre even, rather than ecstatic.

At least, that’s how I remember it now. Though if you were to put me in a court of law, I doubt I’d stand up to cross-examination very well. ‘And yet you claim this memory was suppressed for forty years?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And only surfaced just recently?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you able to account for why it surfaced?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘Then let me put it to you, Mr Webster, that this supposed incident is an entire figment of your imagination, constructed to justify some romantic attachment which you appear to have been nurturing towards my client, a presumption which, the court should know, my client finds utterly repugnant.’ ‘Yes, perhaps. But –’ ‘But what, Mr Webster?’ ‘But we don’t love many people in this life. One, two, three? And sometimes we don’t recognise the fact until it’s too late. Except that it isn’t necessarily too late. Did you read that story about late-flowering love in an old people’s home in Barnstaple?’ ‘Oh please, Mr Webster, spare us your sentimental lucubrations. This is a court of law, which deals with fact. What exactly are the facts in the case?’

I could only reply that I think — I theorise — that something — something else — happens to the memory over time. For years you survive with the same loops, the same facts and the same emotions. I press a button marked Adrian or Veronica, the tape runs, the usual stuff spools out. The events reconfirm the emotions — resentment, a sense of injustice, relief — and vice versa. There seems no way of accessing anything else; the case is closed. Which is why you seek corroboration, even if it turns out to be contradiction. But what if, even at a late stage, your emotions relating to those long-ago events and people change? That ugly letter of mine provoked remorse in me. Veronica’s account of her parents’ deaths — yes, even her father’s — had touched me more than I would have thought possible. I felt a new sympathy for them — and her. Then, not long afterwards, I began remembering forgotten things. I don’t know if there’s a scientific explanation for this — to do with new affective states reopening blocked-off neural pathways. All I can say is that it happened, and that it astonished me.

So, anyway — and regardless of the barrister in my head — I emailed Veronica and suggested meeting again. Apologised for having done so much of the talking. Wanted to hear more about her life and her family. Had to come up to London at some point in the next few weeks. Did she fancy the same time, the same place?

How did people in the old days bear it when letters took so long to arrive? I suppose three weeks waiting for the postman then must equate to three days waiting for an email. How long can three days feel? Long enough for a full sense of reward. Veronica hadn’t even deleted my heading — ‘Hello again?’ — which now struck me as rather winsome. But she can’t have taken offence, because she was giving me a rendezvous, a week hence, at five in the afternoon, at an unfamiliar Tube station in north London.

I found this thrilling. Who wouldn’t? True, it hardly said, ‘Bring overnight clothes and passport,’ but you get to a time when life’s variations seem pitifully limited. Again, my first instinct was to phone Margaret; then I thought better of it. Anyway, Margaret doesn’t like surprises. She was — is — someone who likes to plan things. Before we had Susie she used to monitor her fertility cycle and suggest when it might be most propitious to make love. Which either set me in a state of hot anticipation, or — conversely, indeed usually — had the opposite effect. Margaret would never give you a mysterious rendezvous up a distant Underground line. Rather, she would meet you beneath the station clock at Paddington for a specific purpose. Not that this wasn’t how I wanted to live my life at the time, you must understand.