THE ANIMAL REALM
It was three days since Life of Mammals, the new David Attenborough series, had premiered on BBC2.
Neil walked down Lisburn Road, noting some early morning traffic, and saw a small child poking a stick at a dog. He thought about this child and this dog until he reached the far side of Shaftesbury Square. He wondered if he’d seen it properly; had a small child been poking a stick at a dog? It seemed like an unlikely type of event. The dog would surely move. In Neil’s recollection, the dog did not move.
Neil probably took Dublin Road as far as City Hall and then up round the side of the bus lane to Donegal Place. Donegal Place is the main retail street in Belfast, leading directly away from the imposing front entrance of the City Hall with its domed green roof and the statue of Queen Victoria. He didn’t recollect walking that way and didn’t recognise not recollecting walking that way. He was doing things mechanically, putting one foot in front of the other; following a predetermined route. The last thought he could clearly recollect, afterwards, was seeing a child and that dog. Then being in WH Smith.
He wandered round aimlessly, his attention scattered over the shop like newspapers and glossy magazines. There was a set of books to one side. The recently released LOTR: Visual Companion to The Two Towers caused itself to be lifted by him. The Two Towers, second in a trilogy, was due to be released later this year. Soon, probably, since it was the end of the year now, nearly. Unknown to Neil the release date for The Two Towers was the 19th December. Unknown to Neil was the date today: the 23rd November. He knew it was a Saturday because he’d been at work all week and Friday had been the day before today. He picked up the glossy companion booklet and began leafing through it.
Suddenly he started. He had a horrible, uncomfortable feeling. He looked around; he saw people, milling back and forth, talking, laughing, moaning. He hadn’t been aware of them at all. He looked at the Visual Companion. It seemed that he had read most of it. He couldn’t remember reading it. It seemed likely he had been here for some indeterminate period of time, reading. By God, what was wrong with him? Where was his sense of consciousness, his will, his motive force? Where was his courage, his dignity, his intelligence and sensitivity? He began to feel very bad; as if he had suddenly woke up naked in a public place. There was a pressing necessity to leave, now; leave, get out, flee, hastily replace the Visual Companion on the shelf and weave through the shop to the exit and get out of this nightmarishly embarrassing City Centre with all its people, watching Neil in his state of weakness.
He didn’t stop until he got home and spent most of the rest of the day hiding in his room. Here he allowed himself a trembling sigh of unhappiness. What had happened? Who had been reading that book, or guiding his footsteps to that shop, or even had a cup of coffee this morning? Not he. He had not made a single decision. He had not even forecast that he would do those things. And most certainly, he had not intended to be a strange, self-absorbed loner, chuckling to himself over a Lord of the Rings: Visual Companion book for what must have been twenty minutes, like a junky, like some drunk, like a corpse made into a zombie and walking the earth in search of somebody’s brain …
Neil told this story to Levin and Erwan some weeks later when Erwan told them his own story, how in first year he’d lost his way trying to get to class. As with many memorable conversations, this one took place in the kitchen.
‘I was walking down from the halls, wrapped in my own thoughts, just putting one foot in front of the other, and I got to the big red brick building. You know, the main Queen’s one, the one with the war memorial statue in it.’
‘The Lanyon building,’ said Neil.
‘Yes. Well, I got to that statue, and then kept walking … walking towards my philosophy class … walking … and then I stopped. I realised I was on automatic. I didn’t have a philosophy class right now. I had a physics class, on the opposite side of the Lanyon building. I turned around and headed left, quite cheerfully.
‘Then, I slowed down. I stopped. I walked a total of five, ten metres from my change of direction. I suddenly had an idea that it wasn’t a physics class I was going to. Or rather, I didn’t know. My doubt had wiped the knowledge from my head.
‘I turned back round to go to my philosophy class. But that didn’t feel right.
‘So I stopped to work it out. What class was I supposed to be going to? I waited for the memory to return. It always did. I’d been on automatic, but I’d known where I was going to when I left this morning. I just waited for the knowledge to return.
‘Instead of retrieving my memory, though, I became more and more confused. I suddenly realised that I didn’t know what day it was. That was all right, my week followed a pattern, I usually knew what I had today because of what I had yesterday. I didn’t need to work out what day of the week it was. I just needed to work out what day it was yesterday.
‘I couldn’t remember yesterday. Nothing unusual there, I wasn’t much bothered. So I tried to remember leaving the Halls that morning, so that I could remember what my intention was. I knew I’d left with the intention to go to a particular class; that was certain. But I couldn’t remember getting up. I couldn’t remember being in the Halls or leaving them.
‘Then I felt horrible panic. At one and the same moment, I realised that I could deduce what class I was supposed to go to based on the time of day. I didn’t have a watch of course. But at that moment – this is where I panicked – I couldn’t tell whether it was morning or afternoon. I couldn’t tell! I searched frantically in my memories, but the panic was clouding me. I didn’t know if I’d come from the Halls after breakfast, or after lunch. I didn’t even know whether I’d even left the Halls to come here. I suddenly realised that all I knew for sure was that I’d been walking towards the Lanyon building when I’d snapped out of some unknown daydream. Beyond that, I was blind. And I was having to face up to the humiliating fact that I couldn’t go to class because I didn’t know where or when it was. It disgusted me – I couldn’t believe that I was in this situation, it was ridiculous. But there it was: I was scuppered. Left with no other choice, I came on round here, I believe. Some of you guys were about and we probably played worms or drank a cup of tea or something. What do you think of that?’
Neil Steed wore an expression of pure horror on his face.
Then he told them his own story.