Read Stella Bain Page 5


  She gazes into an abyss. She feels bereft. “I know it only in my head as a recent memory in the same way I remember what I had for dinner last night. The immediacy is gone.”

  “Does it feel as if you had imagined it?”

  “Not when it happened, but now I’m not so sure.”

  Dr. Bridge uses the tip of his umbrella to poke the dirt. “When one has a recollection from childhood,” he explains, “the first few seconds are very real, but then it quickly becomes simply a memory. And this is a good thing,” he adds, “or we should be paralyzed with too many seemingly real moments at once.”

  Stella sighs. “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “When you and I first walked in the garden, a nanny and three children entered. You were remarkably calm.”

  “Was I?”

  “What struck me most was your aura of complete serenity. It was in your face, in the relaxation of your body.”

  She thinks a long moment.

  “Try and see the nanny and children now,” he directs.

  Again, she shuts her eyes to do so. After a while, she begins to shake her head. “I can see them as a memory, but I can’t re-create the feelings I had then.”

  Dr. Bridge stands and waits for her to join him. When they resume their walk, Stella glances back at the roses, hoping her garden will come alive again. She is reluctant to leave the area.

  “The last drawing you showed me,” he says. “Did that man in the bed hurt you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But the drawing made you extremely uncomfortable.”

  “Yes,” she admits.

  “Did you hurt him?”

  “What an extraordinary question.”

  “Yes, it is. But you mentioned earlier that you felt a great guilt, that maybe you had done something terribly wrong. I wondered if the drawing came to you because it was a clue to that experience.”

  Stella has a sudden and intense desire to flee, but she cannot run away from the man beside her. Instead, she freezes rigid on the spot, unable to move a limb, unable to make sense of anything happening around her. She reaches for the back of her neck, certain that someone or something is about to grab her.

  After a time, and she cannot say how long, her limbs loosen and she begins to wobble. A man holds her arm.

  “Stella?”

  Slowly, she turns her head. She recognizes the man beside her; his name is Dr. Bridge. But she cannot remember how it is that she knows him.

  “What happened to you?” he asks.

  She shakes her head. She does not understand. “I was afraid,” she says.

  “Of whom? Of what?”

  “Something was behind me, and I knew that I had to get away. But I understood I couldn’t get away. It felt as if I were frozen.”

  “I think you had a kind of seizure,” the doctor says quietly. “There was no one behind you.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “Almost ninety seconds by my watch.”

  “Ninety seconds!” Stella cries. Ninety incomprehensible seconds. “You have to help me,” she pleads, turning to face him. “You have to help me fix this.”

  “I’ll try. But right now I think we should get you home.”

  “Home,” she repeats. “I have no home.”

  “You have one temporarily,” he says.

  “Am I getting worse?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” he answers.

  A man wrestles with Stella, a man of ferocious strength. He pins her arms up beside her face on the pillow. She pushes as hard as she can with her legs, throwing off her blanket. She kicks the man in the stomach, and he makes a sound of pain. He is going to hurt her, she knows it. She tries to scream.

  “Stella!” a man says in a firm voice. “Stella!”

  She opens her eyes. Illuminated by the crack of light coming through the open bedroom door are the stern features of a man she knows, and for a second, she is not sure if he means to harm her or not.

  “Stella,” he says again.

  Dr. Bridge gradually lessens the pressure on her wrists, as if testing whether or not she will strike out.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, breathing fast.

  He lets go of her wrists and steps away from the bed. A wildness moves through her. She reaches down for her covers.

  “A cry woke me,” he explains, and she notices that he is in his dressing gown, colorless in the dim light. “At first I couldn’t tell whether it was inside the house, but when I heard it again, I knew it was coming from upstairs. You were thrashing about and making frightened sounds.” He gazes at her. “Awful sounds, as if you were being attacked. I was afraid you would hurt yourself, so I tried to wake you up.”

  Her body is shaking.

  Dr. Bridge’s hair is mussed and has drawn itself into a peak.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Do you recall your dream? It must have been a nightmare.”

  “All I can remember is that a man was going to hurt me.”

  “You thought I was he when I tried to wake you.”

  Stella remembers the kick in the stomach. “I kicked you, didn’t I?”

  “Let’s just say you gave it your all,” he says and smiles. “I’ll find Iris to bring you hot tea and clean sheets.”

  Stella does not protest.

  “This man,” Dr. Bridge asks. “Did you think he was going to kill you?”

  Once again, she tries to recall. “I’m not sure. The man was on top of me. He meant to overpower me.”

  “I’m sorry you had to experience that,” he says as Lily appears at his side. Lily moves toward the bed. She pours a glass of water from the pitcher at Stella’s bedside.

  “She had a nightmare,” Dr. Bridge explains to his wife. “She was screaming.”

  “Oh, my poor dear,” Lily murmurs as Stella takes a sip. Lily replaces the glass. “Here, let me just feel your forehead. No fever. Would you like me to return after you’ve changed and sit just outside the door while you sleep?”

  “I’m really fine now,” she says. “You should both go back to bed.” In the light from the hallway, she can just make out Dr. Bridge’s sleepy features.

  Good morning,” Dr. Bridge chirps as he reaches the top of the stairs a week after the incident in the night. It is mid-December, two weeks before Christmas. “You seem happy.”

  “Not as happy as you must be,” Stella says, teasing him.

  “Ah, then Lily told you,” he says, taking a seat on the yellow divan.

  “I asked. Otherwise I should have had to alert you to Lily’s illness.”

  “Is she sick in the mornings?”

  “She is. I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “I’m up and out the door at least an hour before she wakes,” he says. “Iris and Streeter must know as well.”

  “And Mrs. Ryan.”

  “Yes.”

  “They see the full, untouched breakfast trays. Lily must not have wanted to alarm you.”

  “Is it very bad?”

  “She says it is when she first wakes, but after that she’s fine, apart from a dull headache around five o’clock in the afternoon. Perhaps she is resting even now.”

  “Poor thing,” he says.

  “It’s a joyous thing,” Stella reminds him.

  “Yes. Of course it is.”

  “I have new drawings.”

  “Have you?” he asks. “May I sit next to you?”

  “Yes.”

  Stella slips the drawings from a paper packet. The first depicts a corner of the garden and its fence abutting yet another corner, that of a clapboard house. She has gone up the clapboards as far as she can go, at which point the lines become less distinct. With its irises in full bloom, the corner of the garden has been drawn with a more definite hand.

  “Does the fact that the garden is more detailed than the house mean that you remember the garden better than the house?” Dr. Bridge asks.

  “Yes,” she answers. “I tried to see upw
ard or over to a window, but when I attempted that, I knew my hand was just making it up. This morning I thought of another addition to the garden, so I may in time be able to draw the house.”

  “If you could draw the house with a window,” he suggests, “perhaps you would be able to see inside. You might see a face or a piece of furniture or a clock.”

  “Possibly.”

  “You’re quite sure this isn’t the house you describe as your oasis or the house beside which you laid a blanket?”

  “Quite sure.”

  The doctor’s presence, with his scent of laundry starch and soap, reminds Stella of the incident in the night. She does not know how else to refer to it. She was screaming. He came in to wake her. That was all.

  “Might this be a house you’ve drawn before?” he asks.

  “I can’t see its exterior.”

  The second drawing is again of the garden, but portrayed from a different angle. To one side of the path, a bed of flowers has been trampled upon.

  “In another’s hand,” Dr. Bridge says, “this drawing might have had a fetching prettiness to it. In your hand, however, there is beauty, certainly, but it seems to hover inches from its opposite. Even the irises this time appear to be deep wounds of the flesh.”

  Stella is silent.

  “There’s no sign of a gardener or the person you thought was below you working.”

  “No,” she says. “I can feel activity when I think about the garden, but when I draw it, there’s no one there. I look for him, but I can’t see him.”

  “Why are these flowers trampled?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps this is from memory, or it suggests that something bad happened there. I did have a fleeting thought of soldiers trampling over gardens and fields as they marched.”

  “When you look at your garden drawings, what are you thinking?”

  “My thoughts are complex,” she answers. “I take pleasure in the garden itself, in bringing it to life, in remembering something, but there’s frustration as well, because there’s so much more to know. At what point did I have this garden—as a child or as an adult? To whose house was it attached? I can’t make the pencil answer these questions. And I suppose there’s also a feeling of pride in having discovered an ability to do this.”

  “I should hope so.”

  At their next session, Stella presents Dr. Bridge with a drawing of a face. A young man, with only some of his features depicted, looks straight at the viewer. One eye is vividly represented, but little of the right eye or indeed the face below it shows. The side of a nose as well as a half lip and a half chin have been completed. “Is this someone you saw in France?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  A handsome face, even with its injuries. A full head of hair has been mussed about, as in a wind. The jawline is strong, the half lip full. The good eye and cheekbone suggest strength and steadiness.

  “There are parts of the face missing,” Dr. Bridge says.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Why this face?”

  “It was quite clear to me in my mind. I’ve done another.”

  The same man in profile. Grime in the wrinkles of his neck. Most distinctive is the shape of the head, with its almost Egyptian curve at the back.

  “How I would have liked to have drawings of heads like these before I performed operations on the men I’ve treated,” the doctor says. “But what a waste of your talents that would have been.”

  Stella cannot think of any better use for them.

  “The man you’ve drawn here: is this someone you seek at the Admiralty?”

  Dr. Bridge moves slightly away, and Stella turns to him. “I can’t picture at all the man or woman I seek at the Admiralty. It’s not a memory or a dream, merely a strong urge to go there.”

  “I’m sorry you haven’t had better luck. Do you intend to continue, knowing how unlikely it is you’ll encounter this person?”

  She can feel herself blushing. “I’m certain that if I could get inside the building, I would find what I’m looking for.”

  “I may be able to help you with that,” Dr. Bridge offers. “I’ll go with you. There’s an old friend of mine there, an officer. I’m sure he’ll leave our names with the guard. Perhaps after Christmas week? I might have done this sooner for you, but I was hoping that you would let the concept of the Admiralty go and try to solve your problems through our discussions. But when I saw how our walk in the garden caused such a stir, I reconsidered.”

  Stella is amazed.

  “We shouldn’t be too hopeful about the visit,” Dr. Bridge warns.

  Two days later, after several pleasantries, Dr. Bridge asks to see the drawings again. He stops at the face. “I’m wondering if you connect this man with the garden.”

  The comment surprises her. “No.”

  “In sequence, you went straight from the garden to the man. In the last picture in the series of the garden, the flowers are trampled, and you yourself suggested France. Is there a link between tangled flowers and the face?”

  Stella closes her eyes. “There must be,” she says. “But I can’t see anything apart from the obvious. Soldiers often ruined flowers in France. The landscape has been devastated. Perhaps he is a soldier?”

  “Or maybe something at that house, in that garden, was ruined, causing you to make the link between the garden and France.”

  “I have another drawing,” she says, wanting to change the subject.

  He takes the paper from her and sets it on top of the others. “I take it this is the OAB? The Admiralty?”

  “The side entrance.”

  “You couldn’t finish the man coming out the door.”

  Stella shakes her head.

  “Is this the person you hope to meet?”

  “Possibly.”

  “It’s interesting he’s not in uniform.”

  A uniform never occurred to Stella. The faceless man is tall and well dressed.

  “You’ve written ‘Unfinished’ over the drawing,” Dr. Bridge says.

  “I was frustrated.”

  She has drawn the lines of masonry, the wrought-iron gate, and the figure of the guard who stands just outside the entrance. The frame of the drawing encompasses the doorway and the immediate environs. She has depicted the back end of a motorcar waiting at the right-hand side of the page. Stella has filled in the rest of the sketch with lines that show depth, shadow, and texture.

  When the drawing was true, the pencil moved with ease. When she began to stray from authenticity, the marks had to be erased.

  “It’s as if the drawing were trying to tell you something,” Dr. Bridge says, lightly tapping the sketch with the backs of his fingernails.

  “Maybe,” she says. “When the drawing was almost completed, I put the tip of my pencil to the paper and waited. I tried to erase all preconceptions. It was a man and not a woman I sought—I was sure of this. I made soft circles with my pencil, hoping the touch of lead on paper would open a door in my mind. But the frustration built again.”

  Stella has drawn trousers, one knee bent as it descends a step. The angle of the knee and of the body suggest haste. Of course, she thinks now. It is raining. The man has no overcoat or umbrella.

  She has perfected the tailoring of his suit coat. His arms are full of folders, like those of a schoolboy hurrying home. The figure is not that of a boy, however, but of a man, slim but not emaciated.

  “The neck and face of the man descending the steps seemed to vanish from the drawing as if—poof!—by magic,” she explains. “But I’ve never seen that man in any doorway of any city.”

  “I wonder if that’s true,” Dr. Bridge ventures.

  Just before Christmas and before the Bridges are to leave for Lily’s family’s place in Greenwich, they give Stella a present during dinner. Inside a beautifully wrapped box is an abundance of good sketching paper, a series of pencils of different sizes, several erasers,
and—the highlight of the gift—a set of watercolors. Though she cannot remember ever having celebrated Christmas, Stella is touched by their generosity. “I shall try a watercolor of your lovely drawing room as my present to you,” she offers.

  “You have a wonderful talent,” Lily states. “Simply allowing you the space and time to pursue it is gift enough for August and me. Don’t you agree, August?”

  “I do indeed.”

  Stella would like to know who actually purchased the supplies. Lily? Dr. Bridge? The two of them together?

  Invited to accompany them to Greenwich, Stella decides instead to stay home on the grounds that she would feel uncomfortable among strangers at such an intimate family affair. Lily and Dr. Bridge protest, but in the end, they leave Stella on her own with Mrs. Ryan and Streeter, who presents Stella with a roast beef dinner on Christmas Day.

  “Oh, but this is too much,” she blurts before realizing how much work it was for Mrs. Ryan to make the meal, and that both she and Streeter have taken time away from their own holidays to be with her. “But I shall happily try,” she says, looking up and smiling.

  A heavy snow falls while the Bridges are gone. Because Stella doesn’t remember ever having seen snow and is keen to go out into it, she asks Streeter if he has any rubber boots she might wear. He finds her a pair that are too big, but she is pleased to have them. During the storm, she makes her way to the gate of the garden in the middle of Bryanston Square. How silent it is! She forges a path to the rose crescent and marvels at the shapes the snow has made on the dead blooms. She would like to know where the garden she drew was located. She gazes again at the snow-blurred houses that surround the garden. The only indication they are inhabited is the smoke rising from the chimneys. She thinks of Dr. Bridge in Greenwich. What do families do on a holiday when they are all together? Is Dr. Bridge an entirely different man in such a situation?

  After the Christmas holiday, Dr. Bridge and Stella once again find themselves in the orangery.

  “Living with memory loss has meant a life of frustration,” Stella says. “How did the soldiers I met in the hospital camp survive memory loss? Did they go mad, as I sometimes think I will? Occasionally, in my room, I want to lash out and hit something with all my strength. Again and again.”