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The sky was as gray as the murky water from a painter cleaning the brushes, as Edward began his morning. He had already eaten breakfast with Agnes, but a second cup of tea was required by this morning. He felt like a pioneer at home on the wide-sweeping plains that stretch endlessly for miles, as he built a fire in the downstairs hearth and hung a copper kettle filled with water over it. He sat down in the high-backed chair that had been made during Queen Victoria's reign. Some might say that it was beginning to look outdated and out of touch with modernity, but Edward the antiquarian thought it might someday be just as sought after as Georgian furniture now was.
Walking to the house this morning, Edward had been struck by the immensity of the grounds that he owned as part of the surrounds of the house. German blockades were hampering the import of much needed food. Some of the other returned soldiers and locals could surely help him in turning the land and raising crops. It would be hard labor since many of the farm horses were away with the cavalry, but it could be done. He dug into his pocket and his finger slipped through a hole that had formed where the seams had pulled apart from each other, much as the fabric of Edward's own life had. Bypassing the coin and handkerchief, he took out the piece of paper he recorded notes on about the pieces as he unwrapped them. Unfolding the paper from around his pen, he began drafting a potential plotting plan for the garden. He had some knowledge of which plants grew when and how long they needed, but he would have to consult some of the farmers to broaden his understanding. It was easier, somehow, to consider becoming a part of life here. After losing James, he had avoided all in the trenches. But, here farmers were not likely to slip into their muddied fields and be plowed under, as so many were on the front.
The water began to bubble as it grew from a soft simmer, too faint for Edward's ears, into a babbling boil. He paused in his writing and took out a teapot from the kitchen.
“Hello,” he said to the woman in the painting, as he bent to take the kettle off the fire. In a very sane way she had become his companion and, from time-to-time, he spoke to her.
He looked into her dark eyes again now. There was something concealed behind them and her enigma had become his own Mona Lisa. As Edward completed the very ordinary act of inspecting a painting and reading into its meaning, something done the world over by students of art history everywhere, something extraordinary and quite unexpected happened. The painting began to read him.
“Why do you hide?” Edward jumped back at the question, which had not been spoken aloud but had risen in decibel level within him. He shook his head to clear the meddlesome voice away.
“What are you trying to prove?”
Again, the question rose from within him.
“I... am not going crazy,” he said aloud, to overpower the rising voice within.
“Why do you hide?” the voice said inside of him again.
“Why was it James and not you?” the voice confronted him now. His hand shook as he was overcome by the emotions that were forced forward, which he always fought so strongly against.
“Why?” the voice said, as Edward's hand continued to shake. In a crash, the teapot fell to the floor, shattering its porcelain sides.
“James, hide, why,” the voice had become distorted and fragmented, awkwardly assembling the pieces together. Edward left to retrieve a broom and swept up the broken pieces, discarding them in a box he gathered trash into. He returned to the painting and looked at the lady framed therein.
“What's happening to me?” he asked her aloud, as if she could part those painted lips and offer comfort to him. There was, of course, no reply though and the internal bombardment that had risen from within him now lay silent as well.
The house, which usually offered such sanctuary, lacked what he needed for the moment and so he departed, while it was still early in the morning. It was Saturday and Agnes would be suspicious if he returned after being gone so shortly, especially because she usually had to delay supper because he became so involved in the house that he forgot all sense of time. No, he could not return there, which was probably for the better. What he needed was a distraction.
***
“ARE YOU COLD, LOVE?” Clara looked up, her shoulders convulsing in a shiver in reply. The nurse looked sympathetically at the frightened girl before her and handed her a blanket.
“Thank you,” Clara said, “you're very kind.”
“Poor girl,” the nurse whispered under her breath to another nurse that appeared at her side.
“The girl there, you mean?” her companion asked. The first nurse nodded, her cheeks rosy from the cold bobbing from the motion.
“She's been here three days, she has. But every time she looks at me, it's like she's never seen me before.”
With the added warmth around her, Clara sank into the woolen layers and, overcome with the burden of amnesia, soon fell asleep. Slumber, with all its deceptive tendencies, allows one to easily feel that all time has passed when only a few seconds have or that the eyes have just shut when in fact they have been closed for hours. The latter was true of Clara now as she awoke, not refreshed and alert, but into another kind of tiredness— dulled but still as real as the acute sleep that had demanded her obedience.
“Here, I've brought you some soup, Clara,” the nurse said, as she approached. Clara did not look up and at first the nurse wondered if perhaps she were still asleep. But as she turned to walk away, Clara called after her,
“I'm frightfully hungry. If I could have something to eat?”
The nurse looked at her sadly. Although losing the use of a limb or partial hearing or sight could be severely limiting, losing one's memory was a sadness she could not get used to and reconcile.
“What is it?” Clara asked, seeing her reaction.
“You... well, it's really rather early still after what you suffered but you...”
“I forgot who I was again and didn't recognize my name,” Clara finished for her, so she would not have to say it. Though Clara was the one to have suffered so deeply, she acted now to protect this stranger from the pain. Besides, the nurse would remember this incident and there was a good chance that she would not.
The days, in their winter haziness, took on a similar guise to each other and smeared into one foggy stream. Clara gradually began to remember daily life in the hospital, but the sum of the years before was blank. She perfectly embodied Rousseau's tabula rasa. One of the other girls in the factory had identified her as Clara Banks to the nurse that first evening, but the girl knew nothing more of her. Clara sat staring out the window.
“Clara?” At times she still forgot her name, but if caught on a good day she would turn with a pensive smile when hearing it.
“What are you thinking of?” the nurse would ask, when seeing the concentration firmly set on her face. Most often she answered that she was trying to remember—where she lived, about her family, her life, her dreams, anything really. Though the nurses were sympathetic and offered what consolation they could, she was just as much a stranger to them as to herself and thus there was no one to help her remember.
She turned from the window now, as a russet squirrel scampered up a tree, at hearing her name. Today was a good day and though she remembered nothing else, she knew she was Clara Banks.
“Yes?”
A gentleman stood beside the nurse, looking at her cheerfully through his small spectacles resting on his rather large nose. Clara looked from the man to the nurse and back again, wondering who he might be.
“I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are— if I am supposed to.”
She hoped that a frown would not crease his friendly face. Instead, a wrinkle of a smile danced around his blue eyes, which still held the joviality of youth that his creaking joints no longer did.
“No, my dear, we've not met before. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harold Emerson and I was a friend of your grandfather's.” Clara nodded politely, but his explanation had not cleared anything for her. The person they were meant to have in common she could not remember either. Acting in kindness at the realization that she might not remember her grandfather, he did not prattle on about his friend but instead steered the conversation, as stealthily as a ship's captain through murky waters, toward how he came to be here now.
“I saw a list in London of people involved in the accident that the hospital was trying to contact the families of. I saw your name there and stopped right in my tracks. 'Why that must be William Banks's granddaughter,' I said to myself. He always was so proud of you, talking to me about his little Clara,” he said, lapsing temporarily from his silent pledge to not bring up too much of the past. Realizing what he had done, he brushed the thoughts aside and continued,
“The point is, your grandfather was like a brother to me and I wanted to come to see you, to see if I might be of some help.”
“Thank you,” Clara said, not sure what else to say.
He allowed her time to process what had been said and the nurse slipped away to help someone else as they spoke. With practiced patience from the accumulation of years, he waited to speak again until she did first. Faced with the first true link to anyone from her life since the accident, a wealth of questions presented themselves suddenly.
“So, you know my family then? You could help me find them?” The frown, she had hoped would not line his face, now glimmered at the corner of his eyes.
“Clara,” he said gently, and then paused, unsure if he should proceed. The nurse, who had left to attend to a burn victim from the explosion, looked up at Harold now having heard the conversation. She nodded at him, to confirm that he should tell Clara and then she continued changing the bandages on the girl's arms.
“My dear, your grandfather was the last of your family on this earth and he went to join the rest of them a few years ago. You must have moved to London to find some work after that. After all, your grandfather was a man of immense heart but limited wealth. All of his possessions were sold to pay the debts. I'm afraid we had that in common— the money part I mean.” He felt foolish for having digressed to talk of currency, when he had just delivered such heavy news of her family.
She looked away from Harold, out the window again. The squirrel had drawn his tail around him in a bushy blanket to fend off the chill. Harold was concerned that he had burdened her with too great a quantity of sadness too suddenly, but the truth was Clara felt as if the words did not apply to her. In a way, they did not because she was not the girl who lost her family; she was the girl who lost her memory and any recollection of her family as a result of it.
“I see,” she said, not turning from watching the squirrel.
“I know this must be very difficult, but I will help you however I can,” he said, patting her hand reassuringly.
She turned away from the window to face him now and those kind eyes met hers, sealing a bond of friendship between the two.