IT was two days before Strang was strong enough to leave the hiding place, and longer still before Jack learned his story.
As his fever diminished, the old man slept but was able to eat and drink a few sips from the canteen. Sheonagh was semi-present, scouting backwards and forwards to the cave carrying fresh water and legs of deer or sheep, skinned and ready to go on the fire. Where the rest of the animal went was anyone’s guess.
Jack surveyed the few battered possessions that filled the smoky cave. In a large canvas rucksack were mostly practical possessions: clothes, stove, rope, and tools. But in a battered old tin, there were the scratched wooden figures which he instantly recognised.
Drawing his finger along the dusty, soot-lined floor, he sketched out the squares of a board, laying the little figurines in the correct order.
Pushing the king’s pawn forward, he waited. The question was what would the old man play? Strang appeared puzzled when he finally awake. His eyes focussed on the pattern scraped in the dust, the little figures standing patiently awaiting their orders. Then he smiled, gently nudging the black pawn to the spot Jack remembered.
“I remember this game,” the older man croaked. “It was the first time you showed any promised at it.”
The sunlit room, the dust which clung in the air and swam between the pieces on the board. How was it that he had buried the memory? Jack had not been able to see into the past and yet more memories of the man now sat in front of him came flooding back.
“Why is it I couldn’t remember you? I thought, I thought – the other man, that he was my father.”
“And that’s exactly what you were supposed to think.”
“And the other man? Who is he? I mean, I know who he is but why have I grown up believing that he’s my…”
“Lots of questions,” the hand hovered over the queen’s knight shakily. “I’m afraid you won’t like the answers but you deserve them, my God! If anyone does, you deserve to know the truth.”
Sarah skirted to the edge of the cave pretending to be examining the contents of her rucksack. The grey fingers of the older man lifted up the queen from her resting place and held her up above the dim embers of the fire.
“What do you remember about your mother Jack?”
A women’s voice singing. Long, auburn hair being brushed before the mirror. The sound of a carriage. Breaking glass. A body swimming out onto the water.
“She died. I never talked about it with you or … him, John Brown, I mean. But people said things. There was a break-in when we were out. We lived in the countryside then, near the Firth, to be near to the hydro plant you were building. She was found in the water by the shore.”
“Yes, in the water. That’s what we said. That’s what everyone believed.”
Jack’s stomach tightened. His mind was racing over the possibilities.
The older man, his face clouded with sorrow, placed the piece back on the board as he continued to speak. “We didn’t want to deceive you. But neither did we want you to be at risk. Protection that’s what we wanted to give you. Protection from the world… protection from her.”
“What do you mean? Do you mean…”
“Come on son! You can remember can’t you? I mean the drugs haven’t totally obliterated your memories. You were eight years of age; old enough to remember me and old enough to remember what happened that day.”
“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He wanted to run, but was rooted in the gloomy space, his eyes flitting between the untidy ranks of white and black figures and his father’s penetrating glare.
“The night,” the old man hissed, “when she tried to take you, her own son. The night, she revealed herself for who she truly was. When she showed that she would stop at nothing to get her hands on what me and John had made.”
The sound of gushing water filled Jack’s ears. He felt the cold burn his wrist and tight fingers dragged him through the sharp, coastal grass and towards the shore. The chill cut of wind tore his cheeks as the estuary waters surged against the pebbles. A woman’s voice; calling, cajoling, ordering him to hurry on his way. His young mind – somehow attuned to the dangers of his situation – called for him to resist or to run. But that familiar voice, those maternal urgings, compelled him to follow in trail towards the water. As the icy water licked his slippers and gown, a powerful beam of light – like the gaze of some distant deity - fell on the mother and child. Voices could be heard calling his name, dogs barked for a scent, and fiery beacons jumped-ever closer in the distance as the searchers who held them skipped over the shore. The desperate fingers which gripped his collar and dug into his rubs, clung on for a few final seconds, before the woman beside him turned and fled into the night, never to be seen again. Lights, dogs, voices, all of it overwhelming… he could focus on nothing now but the sound of the water and the crashing currents of the Forth.
“Why didn’t I know until now…” He looked at the man across from him, who wore and expression of deep regret and something else too… shame.
“My dearest Jack,” his voice was broken with emotion. “The drugs, it’s the drugs, which have stopped you from remembering.”
“How did you know about … I mean I’ve not told anybody about the Nectar.”
Strang’s blinked in confusion, but then added: “Nectar? It’s nothing to do with Nectar, my boy. Quite the opposite, we felt… it would be safer that way. Your mother, you see, she only ever wanted our designs. Hydro stations, I’m sure you realise, where quite the novelty back then. They still are. The first prototype, almost ready to be commissioned, the blueprints for it were priceless. Countries, multicorps, they would pay any amount to get their hands on our plans. Your mother, she was always an ambitious lady, we both were both were. But I never realised how ambitious until that night; never realised how far she would go to carry out her threats.”
“What happened that night?”
“She wanted the plans. I was working late at the plant but she came to me. You were there with her; you’d been brought as a bargaining chip I suppose. She gave me an ultimatum, either I made copies of the documents there and then or she would take you with her. And you would both be going over the bridge.”
“She had threatened before, threatened and tried to persuade me that there were other opportunities, better opportunities elsewhere in the world. We could take the technology anywhere, revitalise the lost continents, restore the great cities of America, bring Africa back into the Known World. But my loyalty was bought and the designs were not mine alone to give, I couldn’t give them over without my friend John’s permission.”
“What happened when she ran? Did you… Did the Butlers… ?”
“No. The honest answer, I don’t know.”
“Then she’s alive then? My mother is still alive and I didn’t know about it?”
The old man’s wavering voice steadied with a steely resolve. “I hope with every grain of dirt in my body, that she is dead and her body is dust. What that woman made me do – what she forced us to do. The deception we forced upon you.”
“What do you mean?”
“The drugs. It’s why you can’t remember what happened. About your mother. About me. And why you believed for so long that John Brown was your father. After we found you by the water, it shook me more deeply than you can imagine. If your mother could betray me like that, if you could be threatened, who knew what other spies were out there. I was a simple man, I didn’t have expensive tastes, nor did I understand or care for the security arrangements my friend prized so highly. In my eyes, you were safer with John than you were anywhere else in the world. Plus my work was taking me across the world setting up new hydro plants, places like Media. I couldn’t guarantee your safety abroad so I devised a way to keep you safe but still in contact.”
“But why don’t I remember!”
“Because the human brain isn’t just a mixing pot. It’s a sieve.” The old man snapped back. “People keep hold of the st
uff it needs and lets everything else go! You’re too young to know but before there was Nectar, there were a whole range of other substances. Drugs that make you forget as well as remember. We decided, may God forgive us, that the greatest risk to you was the memory of your mother. We decided it was better for you to forget…”
“All these months I thought it was Nectar that was making me crazy. The dreams I’ve been having. It was you all along!”
“It was the only way to protect you.”
Jack stood up, scattering white and black figures across the floor of the cave. He could see Saira staring at them transfixed, her mouth framed in silent shock. “No! I don’t believe you. You didn’t have the right.”
“You don’t understand how dangerous she’d become. If she’d come for you again, if you’d gone with her, I’d never have forgiven myself.”
“You could have stayed here and been a proper father to me, instead of this web of deception and…” Jack paused as if in sudden shock. “My memories, I want them back. I want to remember everything.”
“I can’t give you that. The drugs don’t work like that.”
“Antidote, then.”
“There isn’t one. You can’t control what you remember. You can’t control what you forget. Nectar can help people go looking for what they lost but you know yourself, it seems, that it’s far from reliable and its results are questionable.”
“You know what you told me though… after you wiped my brain.”
“We stuck as close to the truth as possible –”
“Apart from telling me my mother was dead and that my father’s best friend was my father.”
“We told you only the things that would have kept you safe and allowed you to lead a normal life.”
“Normal life! Have you any idea where I’ve been over the last few months. If your plan has worked so well how come I’ve been chased around the world? How come you’ve been hounded out of your home?”
“Jack, Jack, my boy. Let me explain–”
“I wish I’d never come here. I wish you’d let me drown in the water that night.”