I spoke of trips on to the moor, of flowers in spring and the heather by the side of the railway lines which caught fire in summer and burned down to a black crisp as far as the eye could see.
He spoke of a garden with rhododendron bushes in it, and the whooping of the whistles from the trains on the other side of the hill.
Was this southern England?
Yes, just outside London.
I told him about my adopted parents, and how they were more to me than my biological father, wherever he was, whoever he was. How I wished I had the courage to say, You are everything, and he is nothing, and it was not the food on my plate, nor the roof over my head, but that you never let me down which makes you my father, my mother.
He said, “Harry?”
His voice was choking with pain.
“Yes?”
“I… I want to tell you something.”
“All right.”
“My name… my name is Vincent Benton. The gardener’s name is Rankis. I hid my true name because… I am twenty-five years old. I am seven hundred and ninety-four. My father is Howard Benton, my mother is Ursula. I never knew my mother. She dies when I am just a child. I am born at home, on 3 October 1925. Apparently the nanny fainted when I popped out. I’ve never told anyone this in my entire life. No one.”
“I am who I am,” I replied. “That’s all.”
“No,” he answered, levering himself out of bed. “You’re not.”
So saying, he unlocked the box with its crown of wires and eased it on to my head.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I cannot accept this life,” he replied. “I cannot accept it. I cannot. I just wanted someone to understand.”
“Vincent…”
I tried to struggle but had no strength and little inclination. He patted my hands away, pressed the electrodes into my skull. “I’m sorry, Harry.” He was weeping. “If you knew what I have done to you, if you could only understand… I’ll find you, do you understand? I’ll find you and keep you safe, no matter what happens.” The whirr of a machine charging, the fizzle of electricity.
“Vincent, wait, I’m not—”
Too late.
Chapter 82
I was alone when I woke after the Forgetting and, as had been the case before and would be the case, I believe, no matter what was done to my mind, I was still myself.
Still in hospital.
Still dying.
My bed had been moved, or perhaps Vincent’s had been moved. The crown of wires had been tidied away, and I floated now in a warm painkiller glow, my flesh bandaged up against its own gradual shedding.
I lay there a while, contemplating nothing at all. Still at last. A thoughtless, wordless silence. After a while I stood up. My legs gave way immediately. My feet were bandaged, as were my hands, and there was no strength in the swollen redness of my knees. I crawled to the door and managed to make my way out into the corridor. A nurse found me, crying out in shock to see me in such a state, and got a porter with a wheelchair, who helped me sit up.
“I’m discharging myself,” I said firmly.
“Mr August, your condition—”
“I’m dying,” I replied. “I only have a couple of days left to live. I am discharging myself and there’s nothing you can do to prevent me. I will sign any document you like to rid of you liability in this regard, but you’d better get it fast because in the next five minutes I am gone.”
“Mr August…”
“Four minutes fifty seconds!”
“You can’t…”
“I can. And you will not stop me. Where’s the nearest phone?”
They tried to stop me–not with force, but with words, wheedling, dire warnings as to the consequences. I resisted them all, and from the phone at the doctors’ station called Akinleye. This done, I wheeled myself out of the hospital, still in my hospital gown, and into the warm summer’s air of the street. The sun was setting, brilliant orange-red over the mountains, and the air smelled of cut grass. People lurched back from me in horror, at my skin, at my falling hair, at my bloody robe where the lesions were beginning to leak, at my expression of wonder and delight as I headed downhill, letting the brakes go flying off as I sped towards the horizon.
Akinleye met me on the edge of town, in a small red Volkswagen. I’d had her in the area of Vincent’s facility for months, waiting for my call, and now as I rolled my way towards her she got out of the driver’s seat and said, “You look awful.”
“Dying!” I replied brightly, crawling into the passenger seat. “I need every painkiller you have.”
“I have a lot.”
“Good. Take me to a hotel.”
She took me to a hotel.
Gave me every painkiller she had.
“Pen, paper.”
“Harry, your hands…”
“Pen, paper!”
Pen and paper were provided.
I tried writing and got nowhere. My hands were, as Akinleye pointed out, not in a very useful state.
“All right, typewriter.”
“Harry!”