Voice Off. It hurts a human being to be born. It recovers. As toddlers human beings suffer bumps and illnesses. Most recover. So do most human beings, in their brief and painfilled lives, soon come to expect to be hurt and to expect to recover. They also, early in their lives, accept death's inevitability. Thus do most unwell human beings await cure or death with equal passivity.
Detective Constable Derek Hawkins has an aptitude for paperwork and court appearances. Nursing a swollen bladder in a cold parked car has never struck him as glamorous: he is happier by far sitting in the office or waiting on a court bench. Fortunately his superiors appreciate his inclinations and talents, and they like to have him in court — he has a stolid unflappable court persona. And, with him in court, his superiors can concentrate their other officers on what they regard as ‘real’ police work — the garnering of evidence Albeit that the presentation or that evidence in the courtroom is what leads to convictions.
For all of next week DC Hawkins has at least two court appearances per day. This week, the week of his obligatory nightshift, he has been looking forward to catching up on his outstanding paperwork. 'The suspect was seen to...' 'The suspect, when approached, admitted to...’
His superiors’ derisory attitude to the courtroom often amuses DC Hawkins, occasionally it dismays him. He was not unduly surprised, therefore, when, on coming on shift, his paperwork was dismissed as secondary; and dogsbody DC Hawkins was sent to investigate an alleged amnesiac.
Making his disgruntled way to the hospital DC Hawkins considers amnesia, loses himself in a daydream wherein he realises how pleasant it would be to escape his own past, to throw off his imprisoning identity and to start afresh. At twenty three he believes that already he's done everything, seen everything. Never again in his life will he know such intensity of experience: his lot now is dulling repetition, is paler variations of the same. Life for him, he believes, is effectively finished; mistakes been made, opportunities missed, his future decreed, nothing more for this identity to do in the next sixty years but to act out his self-formed fate.
His past, he knows, indelibly shapes his future. At school his friends used his solemn round face as a front for them, to persuade parents and teachers how safe and sensible was their every madcap escapade. Authority seemed reassured by his guileless features, always found, despite his protestations of culpability, extenuating circumstances for his part in any prank. And so it was that authority, in the embodiment of the police, chose him rather than he the police as a career.
How tempting, he thinks, to slip now out of this constraining identity, to greet life with debonair laughter. And, even before meeting him, he resents this man who claims to have done so, and in so doing has interrupted his paperwork.
He has trouble parking, is misdirected to the wrong wing, and when, finally, he introduces himself to a blonde ward sister, she is at her paperwork.
"Somebody here says they've lost their memory." Hers is a small afterthought of an office.
"Yes," she bridles at his overt scepticism.
"Where is he?"
"Go easy on him," she admonishes him as she squeezes around the desk, "He's very unstable at the moment."
"What... mentally?"
"No. Physically worried. As you'd be if you'd lost your memory. This way."
The bed is second along on the right. The man sitting up in that bed is in his mid-thirties.
"A visitor for you," the ward sister tells the man.
The man looks up startled. DC Hawkins watches the man seeking to recognise him, seeking to place him in his own life.
"Detective Constable Hawkins," he introduces himself, letting the man off the hook, says, "Thank you," to the sister who has fetched him a chair.
He pulls the chair closer to the man, putting as much distance as he can between himself and the family of Indians around the next bed. He lays his black briefcase on the bed, flicks the silver catches,
"I'm told you've lost your memory."
"Well..." the man visibly sweats, "Yes and no. I can remember lots of things. But not who I am. He smiles apologetically — ingratiatingly? — at DC Hawkins.
As he extracts a notebook from his briefcase DC Hawkins studies the man. A life's doubts and surprises are registered in the creases of the brow, a lifetime’s wrinkles around the grey eyes. No-one can simply forget what has formed him. His own 23 year old face is smooth, bland; even so he is his past. His mother and father, brothers... there is so much of it, even at twenty three, to forget, to casually mislay.
"Before we go any further," he opens his notebook, "I warn you that should you, for whatever reason, not be telling the truth, and, as a consequence I have to go looking up all sorts of records, you will be charged with wasting police time. And if it turns out that you’ve known all along who you are, then you most certainly will be charged. Is that understood?"
"I'm sorry..." the man has a tremor in his voice, "I honestly don’t know who I am."
The man’s obvious agitation does not persuade DC Hawkins to the truth of what he is saying. The man may be trembling because he is simply frightened, and he may be frightened simply because he is not telling the truth.
"Now," DC Hawkins presses the button on his pen, "I’ve never actually had to deal with a case like this before. So let's begin by seeing what we do know. First a physical description. Starting at the top. Colour of hair," he stretches up to look at the man’s head, "Dark brown going grey. Eyes — grey/green. Face — squarish. Any scars?"
"I haven't seen any."
"Height?" The man shrugs. DC Hawkins runs his eye up the man’s bed length, "Five ten, eleven," he writes. "Weight?" He purses his lips, "Say eleven, eleven and a half stone." The man does not react: has he forgotten vanity too?
"Now your personal statistics. Date of birth?"
The man doesn't know. Nor his place of birth, nor the names of his parents, of his wife, nor of his children. Surely no man can forget his children, DC Hawkins thinks. Or do I think that simply because I don't want my parents to forget me? Maybe children, though, are the easiest of all to forget. He often has to remind himself that he too is now a father. That little pink bundle of smells, however, seems to have little to do with him. He makes fatherly noises; but it is a going through the motions. And easy enough to forget his wife, because he can't now grasp her existence. Why, he often asks himself, did he marry a woman who, as soon as she was married, thought of herself as a wife, whose sole raison d'être became the catering to his creature comforts? And she now thinks of herself as a wife and a mother, and she tries to reconcile the two. Yet, for all her busyness, there is a vacancy behind her self-imposed labels.
Before his marriage DC Hawkins had thought there was something elusive about his wife. He had married her to capture that elusiveness. Only, in domesticity, to realise that there was nothing there, that his imagination had endowed her with a mystery that she did not, does not, possess, nor aspire to. A vacancy is all there has ever been. And, here before him, is a man with a contracting density and no labels.
Who can he be?
You're the detective, he tells himself, detect.
"You carne in here what time today?"
"This afternoon. I don't know what time. The nurses wear their watches upside down. But I was taken to Emergency first." After all his negative answers the man is excessively pleased to be able to give information.
"What happened?"
"I... don't know," the man sinks back against the pillows, "The nurse, she's gone off now, said I collapsed in Harborough Road."
"Why did you collapse?"
"I don't know. I've got a bruise on my head."
"Do they know what's wrong with you?"
"They haven’t said."
DC Hawkins pauses,
"I'll see the doctor later. Now... I take it you weren’t wearing pyjamas when you collapsed?'
"My clothes are in there," the man eagerly points to the bedside locker.
Moving his briefcase to the end of the bed, DC Hawkins spreads the clothes out upon it. His search is more thorough than the nurse's. Not only does he turn out every pocket he also feels along the seams, knocks on the rubber heels of the shoes, examines the insteps for dirt. There is none.
Taking up his notepad, aware that he is being watched by the family of Indians, DC Hawkins lists each item of clothing, make, material and colour. He notes the shoe size.
"All very ordinary this. Nothing to help us here. Except what isn’t here. No money, no wallet, no keys. Not even a bus ticket. Think you could’ve been mugged?"
The man wonderingly touches the bruise on the back of his head.
"The doctor said I probably banged my head on the ground when I collapsed. Do you think I could’ve been mugged?"
"In Harborough Road? Unlikely. And we’ve got another puzzle here," he reaches over and picks up the blue quilted anorak, "Why this? It was a hot day today. What I saw of it. You’d have been boiling in this."
The man frowns. Eventually he limply lifts his hand, lets it fall. DC Hawkins folds and returns the clothes to the bedside locker. Profession? he fingers the shirt and trousers. Semiskilled. The clothes aren’t up to much, could do with a decent clean. Nor are they anywhere near sharp enough for a salesman. Hands aren’t callused.
"Can you drive?" he asks as he rises from the locker.
"I don’t know." Too neat and clean for a derelict. Probably a diffident office-wallah. Or self-effacing long term unemployed.
DC Hawkins sits back on the chair. The man takes sips of water. He’s right-handed. Pity. The water shakes in the scratched beaker. I know who I am, DC Hawkins thinks, I cannot escape who I am. Which must mean, my thinking it, that I must want to. And I envy him because he’s magicked away his past. Watching the water dance in the shivering beaker he thinks — and yes, freedom is frightening.
"You said you can remember some things. What?"
"Well... I can remember how to speak. I know what things are. The names for them. And some things I almost take for granted. Like being able to read... Other things I have to think about. Like using a knife and fork. You see, although I can remember how to use a knife and fork, I don’t remember ever having used them before."
DC Hawkins has been listening to his accent. No habitual affectations. Straightforward Southern Standard English.
"What were you doing in Harborough Road?"
"I don't know," the man shakes his head, "I don’t even know what it looks like. Sometimes I think it has trees in it. Sometimes I just see houses. One of the nurses said it has garages in it. But all I see is a road. It's a name, a word. Like if I think of dog, I just see all different breeds of dog. Not any one dog in particular."
"Why should you think or dog? Did you have a dog?"
"I don't know," he looks directly at DC Hawkins, "Why does no-one believe me?"
Because it's too bloody easy, DC Hawkins thinks, to cancel the past. He should be so lucky. Wipe out all the shames, run away from all the mistakes. His wife had thought his main virtue safety, and he’d been flattered, so he had married her; when the inside him had felt insulted, but being used to it he had bowed his head and donkeylike had done his duty. To negate all the chances missed. The old schoolfriend who had invited him into his electronics firm and he had been truly tempted, but the family voices of common sense had prevailed, a high risk venture, shit or bust; and here he is a detective constable in Northampton and his friend is a dollar billionaire in California. I hate myself. Envy and resent him. No wonder no-one wants to believe you.
"What do the doctors say?"
"I’ve only seen one. He said my memory'll come back of its own accord."
"When?"
"He didn't say. Just told me to relax."
DC Hawkins grimacing sighs,
"I've got to assume it won't. Dc you have any objections to giving me your fingerprints?"
"No," the man frowns, "Why should I?"
"I don't know. Don't know why anyone has come to that. But if you do have a criminal record, then with your prints I’ll be able to find out in a couple of hours who you are."
"That soon?"
The man gratefully accepts the least information. Maybe he is telling the truth.
"What if I haven’t?"
"It'll take longer. We’ll see. If your memory does come back it’ll all be academic anyway. If it doesn’t, and you don’t have a record, we’ve still got a few more strings to our bow. Then there’s your family. Though it will be 24 hours before they can officially register you as missing. If they’ve missed you already, and if you’re from Northampton, then we should know who you are almost straightaway. If you’re from somewhere else it will take longer of course. But all of that depends on your having a family who’ll register you as a missing person. No memories at all of a family?"
He looks a family man, as if he belongs to someone. A taken for granted household fixture. A drab wife buying drab clothes for him. Husband of... Father of... a man who no longer exists in his own right, who probably spends his weekends digging the garden and getting shouted at. He definitely has the anxious look of the family man about him. Or is he simply an anxious man? If his memory has gone he certainly has good cause to be anxious.
"No..." the man is shaking his head, "I see snapshots. Family groups. But none of the same family. Is this Northampton?"
"You didn't know that?"
"No."
"Where would you have expected to be?"
"I don’t know."
"Do you know where Northampton is?"
"I think so... Pictures of maps. About sixty miles north of London. Between Coventry and Oxford?"
"More or less. And exactly sixty miles from London. Think you come from London?"
"No idea."
"Then again you could know the distance from a signpost here. Remember any signposts?"
"Not specifically. Blue and white. No, all I can see is a vague map."
"So you were travelling, and probably on the motorway. They have white on blue signs. You do know this is Britain?"
"I suppose so. I hadn't thought about it. Northampton is in Britain. It follows."
"Not necessarily. There's a Northampton in Australia. Several in America."
"But this is Britain?"
"Yes."
DC Hawkins decides to believe that the man is telling the truth.
"Let's take these prints." He smiles as he pulls the card and ink pad from the briefcase, "Never know I might be arresting you tomorrow."
The man watches his prints being transferred from the ink pad to the card.
"Ever had this done before?" DC Hawkins asks.
'This is new," the man fervently declares.
Two more prints are taken.
"You’re a man or absences," DC Hawkins tells him, "Absence of indentations on your fingers — where a ring may have been. Absence of a sun tan line — where you might have worn a watch. Let's see if having your photograph taken stirs any memories."
Returning the ink pad and card to the briefcase DC Hawkins takes out a polaroid. He stands self-consciously at the foot of the bed, camera before his red face.
"Look straight at me." The man blinks in the flash. Other patients and visitors look to them, turn away.
DC Hawkins sits again beside the bed,
"I can't promise any quick results. In fact I can't promise any results at all. Over 7,000 people go missing every year. Within that same year 2,000 of them will turn up again. But the other 5,000..? Who knows? Maybe you're one of those who've never been heard of again... If you haven't heard from me by first thing tomorrow morning it'll mean you haven't got a record. So you can breathe a sigh of relief on that score. To be quite honest it'd probably be much easier for us to trace you if you were dead. Forensic could then take you to bits, find out where the pieces used to fit. But alive... what you tell us, what we think you tell us, what you appear to know... all of it can mislead us. For me, now, it'll mean my having to go through all the missing persons files, see if I can find a near enough fit. I'll also try to get the local paper interested. If, in the meantime, your memory does come back, can you get one of the nurses to let me know? Here's my number. Save me a lot of work."
"Yes. Certainly," the man takes the piece of paper, studies the numbers.
"Now let's have a look at this," DC Hawkins presses a button on the camera, removes the photograph, waves it dry, "That a good likeness?"
The man pales as he looks at the photograph of the man with red-centred eyes in the hospital bed. He bites on his lip,
"I don't know."
