With a start he realized that he had forgotten. Quickly he searched his mind, and found he could remember almost nothing of his distant past, where he was born, his parents and childhood. Instead he saw once again, this time with luminous clarity, the rowing-boat on the crimson Ganges and its dark oarsman watching him with his ambiguous smile. Then he saw another picture, of himself as a small boy, writing in a huge ledger in which all the pencilled entries had been laboriously rubbed out, sitting at a desk in a room with a low ceiling of bamboo rods over his father’s warehouse by the market — ‘Nonsense!’ Flinging the memory from him, with all its tender associations, Elliott stood up restless, his heart racing with a sudden fever. His forehead burned with heat, his mind inventing strings of fantasies around the Dr Singh wanted by the police. He felt his pulse, then leaned into the mirror over the mantelpiece and examined his eyes, checking his pupil reflexes with expert fingers for any symptoms of concussion.
Swallowing with a dry tongue, he stared down at the physician’s hands which had examined him, then decided to call his own doctor. A sedative, an hour’s sleep, and he would recover.
In the falling evening light he could barely see the numerals. ‘Hello, hello!’ he shouted. ‘Is anyone there?’
‘Yes, Dr Singh,’ a woman replied. ‘Is that you?’
Frightened, Elliott cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. He had dialled the number from memory, but from another memory than his own. But not only had the receptionist recognized his voice — Elliott had recognized hers, and knew her name.
Experimentally he lifted the receiver, and said the name in his mind. ‘Miss Tremayne—?’
‘Dr Singh? Are you—’ With an effort Elliott made his voice more guttural. ‘I’m sorry, I have the wrong number. What is your number?’
The girl hesitated. When she spoke the modulation and rhythm of her voice were again instantly familiar. ‘This is Harley Street 30331,’ she said cautiously. ‘Dr Singh, the police have—’ Elliott lowered the telephone into its cradle. Wearily he sat down on the carpet in the darkness, looking up at the black rectangle of the front door. Again the headache began to drum at his temples, as he tried to ignore the memories crowding into his mind. Above him the staircase led to another world.
Half an hour later, he pulled himself to his feet. Searching for his bed, and fearing the light, he stumbled into a room and lay down. With a start he clambered upright, and found that he was lying on the table in the dining room.
He had forgotten his way around the house, and the topography of another home, apparently a single-storey apartment, had superimposed itself upon his mind. In the strange upstairs floor he found an untidy nursery full of children’s toys and clothes, an unremembered frieze of childish drawings which showed tranquil skies over church steeples. When he closed the door the scene vanished like a forgotten tableau.
In the bedroom next door a portrait photograph stood on the dressing table, showing the face of a pleasant blondehaired woman he had never seen. He gazed down at the bed in the darkness, the wardrobes and mirrors around him like the furniture of a dream.
‘Ramadya, Ramadya,’ he murmured, on his lips the name of the dying woman.
The telephone rang. ‘Standing in the darkness at the top of the stairs, he listened to its sounds shrilling through the silent house. He walked down to it with leaden feet.
‘Yes?’ he said tersely.
‘Hello, darling,’ a woman’s bright voice answered. In the background trains shunted and whistled. ‘Hello? Is that Hampstead—’ ‘This is Harley Street 30331,’ he said quickly. ‘You have the wrong number.’
‘Oh, dear, I am sorry, I thought—’
Cutting off this voice, which for a fleeting moment had drawn together the fragmented persona clinging to the back of his mind, he stood at the window by the front door. Through the narrow barred pane he could see that the rain had almost ended, and a light mist hung among the trees. The bedraggled figure on the bench still maintained his vigil, his face hidden in the darkness. Now and then his drenched form would glimmer in the passing lights.
