The house was as interesting inside as it was out. A stone staircase coiled up into the dark, the banisters carved into little columns like a diagonal cloister. One was an oak tree, with brown glass beads for acorns. The contrast between that, which must have been an echo of how the whole university had once been, and the abject poverty outside was bizarre. Joe hadn’t known that places like this still existed.
‘You teach here?’ he asked, amazed.
She laughed. ‘Oh, God, no. All the old college buildings are hotels now, this one included. The teaching is done at the faculties – all very ordinary, I’m afraid. We’ve rented this place for the night.’ She led him through to the next room, a wide space where clusters of people in gowns and evening jackets were talking in the animated way of friends who didn’t often get the chance to see each other. In passing, he heard someone say, ‘And my ninth point …’
‘Oh, there’s Henry,’ she added, and rose on to her toes to wave.
The other Professor Sidgwick was a handsome man whose hand enveloped Joe’s when he shook it.
‘Mr Tournier, what a pleasure. Yours is a fascinating case, it really is.’
‘Is it,’ said Joe, feeling strange to be ‘mister’, and to hear so many well-dressed people speaking English. He had an urge to tell them to stop being so silly. You couldn’t do nice conversation in English. English was for yelling at omnibus drivers and getting drunk behind dodgy clubs.
The dinner bell rang.
‘I thought we said eight?’ Mrs Sidgwick said.
The butler ghosted up. ‘If Madame wishes to use College slaves for the occasion, Madame will have to put up with College time,’ he said, in what sounded to Joe like rather deliberate French, with the hint of an eyebrow at just what he thought about all the English. It was a relief to find a normal person in among everything else. Joe wanted to hurry away with him. ‘Suspect they’ve only the one setting on the old clockwork. But I shall usher guests through as they arrive.’
‘Usher,’ said Sidgwick.
‘Usher, my dear,’ the butler said firmly, then glided away.
‘Fair enough. Can’t complain; on we go, everybody.’
In the dining room was the finest spread Joe had ever seen.
Sidgwick pulled out a chair for his wife and put Joe between them. Four slaves appeared from a narrow side door to serve. They were all matching blond men. Among the plates and serving bowls, flowers cascaded.
Joe looked along the table and realised uncomfortably that some people were still watching him. ‘I feel like a new giraffe at the zoo,’ he said.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Sidgwick, but her husband talked over her and she looked amused into her salad.
‘We’d like to talk to you about your epilepsy.’
‘Right,’ said Joe, not seeing what that could possibly have to do with these people. Some of them, having noticed the College slaves, were talking now about the pedigree of their own.
‘We’d like to know what you remember about the attack you had two years ago.’
‘If you don’t mind talking about it,’ Mme Sidgwick put in, more towards Sidgwick than Joe himself.
Sidgwick dipped his head. ‘Yes, of course, pardon me.’
‘How do you know about it?’
‘You were in the papers. Would you prefer not …?’
‘No, it’s all right,’ Joe said. ‘I … was found in Londres, at the Gare du Roi. I don’t remember getting there. I didn’t remember anything on the day, except my name. After a few hours I realised I knew general things; like, I knew how to read, how to speak English and French, I sort of knew Londres geography. But nothing specific. I still don’t remember anything from before that day. The doctor says it was a seizure. Funny but not … this kind of funny, I’d have thought,’ he said, nodding down the table.
‘No, no, no, it is quite our kind of funny. You say you were confused. Our information is that … pardon me, but that in fact you were in an asylum. You swore that you were married to someone who didn’t turn out to be your real wife.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘We asked for the files,’ Sidgwick said blankly. ‘You’re a slave, it’s all quite easy to come by, there’s none of the usual medical privacy nonsense. We looked into buying you, but then your service tenure was up and it was too late.’ He seemed annoyed.
Joe felt on edge. If Sidgwick still wanted him, really wanted him, there was nothing but social convention to stop the man slapping a blue band on Joe’s sleeve, taking away his papers and claiming to have found him wandering about outside the tobacconist’s for anyone to pick up.
‘Henry, you’re making him nervous,’ Mrs Sidgwick said.
‘I’m what?’
‘Ignore him,’ she said to Joe. ‘Do you remember the name you gave to the doctor?’
Joe had to struggle to remember what they’d been talking about. ‘Yes, I – but it was a false memory. They said at the asylum that epileptic paramnesia is common,’ he said, looking between them. He wanted to stop. The sooner Sidgwick decided he was boring, the better. ‘Why is it interesting? What’s it to do with all this?’
‘It is relatively common. In fact, it’s happened to everyone in this room,’ Sidgwick said. ‘Every one of these people experienced exactly what you’ve just described, but usually for a much shorter time. An hour, two hours. The same intense disorientation, feeling convinced that their families were not their families, only to recover later the same day. So far we’ve found it affects men and women equally. It’s nothing to do with gendered neuroses or any nonsense like that. Some people have even suggested that the same phenomena would explain erratic periods of behaviour in dogs.’
‘R … ight, good.’ It did make Joe feel better to hear again that it wasn’t a unique piece of insanity, but not much. ‘Am I missing something? You’re the Psychical Society, not the Psychiatric Society.’
Mrs Sidgwick smiled. ‘Some of the stories link up.’
‘What?’ he said slowly. He felt as if she had thrown a pebble at him and, instead of bouncing off, it had gone straight through, and now it clattered as it fell down inside him. ‘Link up how?’
She sat forward. ‘The reason we contacted you is that we’ve been playing games of mix and match. We invited people to write to the Society about their experiences. When the letters came in, we found that occasionally, the same name would appear. Of course, only a few people wrote in. But then we started to visit asylums, looking for cases of this syndrome, and we stumbled on yours. The name you gave, for the woman you thought you were married to. Madeline Shale. Is that right?’
Joe didn’t say anything, because he had no memory of having given the doctor a surname. He must have held that in mind only for a little while, just like the memory of the man from the railway station, the one who had taken him to hospital. It was such a tiny thing, but it brought on a blast of despair. He could have forgotten God knew what since then, without even noticing.
‘Now, we had an Albert d’Vigny write to us, saying that for an entire morning he was convinced he was really called Albert Shale and he had a sister called Madeline, who had gone missing along with her son and no one was looking for her. It happened to him about five weeks before it happened to you. He’s that gentleman over there. If it’s the same Madeline, he would have been your brother-in-law. Do you recognise him?’