Someone once said that God gave us memory so that we might enjoy roses in December. The person who said it was probably one of those blind optimists who believe in finding the best in everything. The kind of person who listens to Charlotte Church and thinks that Cliff Richard would make somebody a lovely husband.
Memory is a curse.
If I had lost my memory when I lost everything else, then perhaps I could be content with this life. This life that sits around my feet like an unravelled sweater, each kink in the thread representing my thwarted ambitions.
But I can’t do anything about it. They keep feeding me and keeping me alive because that is the right thing to do under the circumstances. They manipulate me, like a giant ungainly beanbag, these physiotherapists with their muscular forearms and their cheery banter. But I refuse to respond to their hateful optimism. It’s easy for them to be thankful, it’s easy for them to smile and to joke and to work my crippled legs as though they will ever, ever walk again.
They tell me that it’s good to cry.
“Let it all out,” they urge, dabbing at my eyes with tissues and stroking the un-stuffed cushion of my hair with professional fingers.
How can I ever let it all out? I am so full of it, so stuffed with it that to let it all out would be to reduce me to an empty shell of skin and bones. I am made of it.
Made of anger, made of fear.
I look around this room that Sarah has prepared for me and I know I should be grateful, I know she is doing everything she possibly can to make my life more comfortable, but how can she assume to imagine what this is like? I hate her because she does not know. I despise everyone because they do not know. And, since I cannot really smile – and by keeping quiet about my true feelings – I can offer them the irreproachable satisfaction that they are coping with my condition.
How dare they take this for themselves? They see me and they pretend that nothing has changed, as though just by being chirpy and by cracking jokes they will make me believe that everything is as it always was.
We have always been close, Sarah and I. Our terrible parents, our dysfunctional childhood brought us together. There wasn’t anyone else we could talk to you see. But now Sarah is afraid of me. I can see it in the way she keeps her distance. She looks at me and she wants to run. She can’t wait to get out of the room, out of the suffocating heat, out into the fresh open air where she can breathe.
Meanwhile I sit here. Reduced to nothing more than a functioning brain. It’s almost like one of those awful science fiction films where the mad scientist hooks up the offending grey matter to electrodes in a jar and creates a monster. That is me. That brain floating around in a jar filled with liquid is me right now. My body is a vacuous receptacle and my brain knocks against the sides but cannot get out.
I stare out of the window and I see a life in which I can no longer participate. It might be preferable not to see it. It is a kind of torture, like being diabetic and having someone eat chocolate in front of you. It might be better if they just drew the curtains and blocked out the sun, for I have no use for it any more. I find pleasure in nothing. I anticipate nothing. But what can I do about it? I am controlled by nurses and medications and well meaning people who keep me alive like a leafless stalk that once had a flower.
I try to remember the moment of my seizure, to remember the fall down that stone staircase, but there is nothing beyond a certain point. My brain is locked like a rusted cog and I have to force it to jump across that small gap of memory so that my mind can arrive at the hospital several days later.
And before the fall?
I remember Plasticine, and children, and the smell of pencil sharpenings mixed with the damp reek of cauliflower from the dinner hall. I was wearing my linen jacket and the classroom windows were open. Holly Walters was afraid of the wasp, though it was only a fly, buzzing around and around in demented circles.
It was some kind of burst blood vessel in my brain, bad enough to knock out my system like a broken fuse wire. The long flight of uneven stone steps outside the staff room have been there for over a hundred years but nobody has ever fallen down them before. I remember none of this but I have been told so many times now that I can almost see it happening. I hit my head and snapped my spine and the world came tumbling down.
So now I am here.
Sitting in this peaceful room, with a beautiful view across the ancient rose garden that will undoubtedly delight everyone in high summer. People will visit me, they will come here and they will gasp at the roses.
And it will give them something to look at.
Something other than me.


Bernie, the nurse, is very amiable and he tries really hard to treat me like a normal human being, but it is impossible. If I were normal I would not need someone like Bernie to translate for me in that alphabet gibberish. I would not need someone to feed me, to bathe me, to deal with my stinking nappies; cleaning me up so that I smell sweet and acceptable for public consumption. But, having said that, at least he is a stranger. At least I don’t have to rely on a family member to look after me. That would be the ultimate humiliation.
At least here I have my privacy. I have my own quarters and Sarah is very careful not to overstep the boundaries even though this is her house.
Bernie is making my bed.
He hums a tune as he moves around to tuck and straighten the bedspread. His uniform is a pair of white cotton trousers and a loose, short-sleeved shirt. He has hairy arms and thick wrists but he isn’t a big man, just stocky from lugging people like me around from room to room I suppose. I don’t know how old he is but he’s younger than me. It is always difficult to judge a man’s age when he has lost so much hair but I’d say that Bernie is probably somewhere around thirty. He has a neat little beard, the trendy kind that frames his mouth and somehow makes him look like a gentle, furry animal. I like his face. It is kind. I wonder if a kind face is a prerequisite if you want to become a nurse? Surely aggressive features would be detrimental in such a caring profession?
Yesterday, Sarah brought Toby Tapworth to see me.
It took a lot of persuading from Bernie to bring me around to the idea and at first I said no-way. I mean, who wants an eight-year-old child gawking at them when they’re like, this freak? I know how insensitive kids of Toby’s age are, I know the kind of names they use for people like me and it only gets worse as they get older. That’s why I never wanted to teach secondary kids. I was afraid of them.
Bernie said he thought it would be a good idea for both of us. Toby and me. Bernie, being a trained nurse, would think that wouldn’t he? He’s all about healthy bodies and healthy minds so he’s keen for me to start branching out. They all think that, like some Technicolor miracle, like a soppy film at the pictures with throbbing violins and life-affirming proclamations, that I’ll suddenly find inspiration through the eyes of a little boy. I wish it were that simple.
Toby’s a bright enough lad.
He was always very cheerful in class, always willing to help.
When Sarah ushered him in to my room he wouldn’t come near me at first.
He stuck close to his mother and looked at the carpet as though he’d done something wrong. Bernie encouraged him to come over to me, but I could see it was a struggle. And why should I be bothered, I thought? He could have sodded off for all I cared. But he came, eventually, creeping forward with his hands in his pockets and his hair sticking up at the back of his neck. He’s a nice looking boy. I know he probably hates having that red hair but when he grows up he’ll be glad of it. It’s not the awful orange colour that kids love to poke fun at, it’s more auburn but I’m sure he still gets called names.
“Can he see me?” he asked, looking at Bernie, not at me. I’m getting used to that kind of treatment. People talk about me as though I’m not in the room. ‘Look at me,’ I scream in silent frustration, ‘look at me,’ but they avert their eyes and aim their questions at an invisible spot somewhere above my head.
“I’m sorry about your brain,” said Toby.
And I was so caught off guard that something happened. It surprised us all, especially me – I laughed. Well, it started out as a laugh, but it sounded more like a grunt. You see my face doesn’t move, so there was no smile attached, just this unexpected noise that scared the hell out of Toby and made him back away as though I’d just spouted fangs.
I could see that Bernie and Sarah were delighted with this advancement so I resolved to keep my emotions to myself in future. It doesn’t do to get them too excited; after all, it was only a laugh for crying out loud.
“I’m glad to see that you haven’t lost your sense of humour,” laughed Sarah, squeezing my arm with enthusiasm.
But she failed to mention the fact that I’ve lost so much more. Maybe I just need to laugh more often?
Maybe then they’d start to look at me?
Maybe then they wouldn’t be so terrified?
*
This morning I had porridge for breakfast and Bernie mixed in some cinnamon and honey. My sense of taste and smell have become startlingly astute and food is something I can truly appreciate. I asked Sarah to push me out in to the garden and she looked delighted with the suggestion. She has left me out by the oak trees for half an hour with a blanket tucked over my legs. I think it is the first time I’ve been left unattended for weeks.
The sun darts through the unfurling leaves above my head and falls in fidgety scraps across the lawn, across my blanket. And on the lightest of breezes I can smell the barely discernible scent of daffodils. It is a fragrance I have never noticed before and it is pale yellow and green. It is the kind of spring day when you catch the first glimpse of summer and, in spite of myself, I remember the caterpillars we used to catch as children. We would spend hours collecting wriggling insects from beneath the thorny stems of the rose bushes, breathing in the glorious scent of the overblown blooms with the full heat of August burning fiercely against our backs.
And I can feel the scratch of those thorns against the back of my hand, the soil and grit against my knees as I scavenge for bugs.
And I make an astonishing discovery: like fingerprints on the surface of last night’s wineglass my sense of touch is still there. A smudge of memory that can be commanded by my underestimated brain and pulled in to focus when I jiggle the lens of recollection. I know how this blanket feels against my legs. I know how the cold steel of this chair stings the surface of my skin when I touch it. My mind holds the template for all of these sensations and all I have to do is follow the outlines to bring them from the inside, out.
And for the second time in two days I make a noise. A noise that startles the birds out of the branches above me with a clatter of frantic wings.
That noise is laughter.
And, like the scent of the daffodils, like the warmth of the sun, the sound pleases me.

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