The Way Back Ch. 01

One, I started to do my own shopping. It took a long time, shuffling on my crutches, but I persevered. I got out more and more. I went to a rock concert with her, to the pictures and to pubs with her friends.

I discovered that after the first flinch and pitying look, I was accepted as normal.

Two, I began to wonder about my life before. Was I in a relationship? Married? Good heavens, children? Did I have a job? What was it? Was I rich or poor?

However, I wasn't going anywhere was I? Not without two sticks anyway.

After weeks of haggling I had got the usual social security allowances for a cripple and it enabled me to pay my way. As far as her friends were concerned we were an 'item', and neither of us had any inclination to tell them otherwise.

I continued to get better physically. I graduated to one stick but that was as far as I got. My damaged knees would give way suddenly and I needed the support. My ankles strengthened.

As Christmas approached I wondered where Trish would go, but she told me (again) she had no family in Britain; they were all in New Zealand. So we had a quiet Christmas together. She dragged me to Mass, of which I could make neither head nor tail, cooked a superb goose and we got pleasantly tipsy with a few friends of hers in the evening. Then, after a riotous party at New Year we were back to normal life again.

However my memory seemed to be stuck, and depression set in half way through January. Mind you, the weather didn't help, cold, grey and wet. Where was this thing they called snow?

------

TWO

Towards the end of January, two years and five months after the mugging, memories began returning, mainly of childhood. I kept coming back to the idea of Manchester.

On Tuesday 27th January (I noted the date in my 'diary'), I awoke and I knew; I knew who I was. Allan Jonsson, from a place called Sale, near Manchester.

I just knew I had a wife, though I couldn't remember what she looked like or her name. I also believed I had children, though I could not remember how many or their names. I think I had remembered bits of that before but was unable to process it or to remember it later.

I was about to tell Trish. but something stopped me. I needed to think. Trish went off to work and I sat down to think. I had been here for over two years but my wife had not been near me. Perhaps our marriage was unhappy. Perhaps she had divorced me. In any case she would hardly want to start again with me in the state I was in. I didn't want her to see me and then for me to know that she was revolted by me. I needed to find out more before approaching her. But how? More immediately I would have to tell Trish.

That evening after the evening meal that I had prepared, I sat her down on the sofa and prepared myself. She looked intrigued.

"Something happened?" she asked with a nervous smile.

"Before I start, will you promise to do nothing about what I'm going to tell you?" I asked earnestly.

She looked startled, then a smile spread across her face.

"You've remembered!" she said triumphantly.

"Will you promise?"

"It's big, isn't it?" her smile was broader.

"Trish, for the last time, or I won't tell you. Promise?"

She looked contrite.

"Yes, Aled," she said, and waited.

"It's not Aled," I said with a straight face.

She actually squealed, something I'd never heard her do before, I least I didn't think so. "You've remembered! Well?"

"It's Allan Jonsson."

She flung her arms round me and hugged me hard while avoiding my tender bits.

"Two Ls two Ss no H! One of your earliest memories. I'm so glad," she whispered, "but why keep it secret? What's the problem?"

"I've remembered something else. I think I have a wife and children."

Trish stopped smiling and looked puzzled.

"So? Now you can find them. We can find out where you lived before the accident. You can go home."

"It wasn't an accident, Trish."

"No," she corrected herself. "The attack. But what's stopping you?"

"Has it ever struck you that no one came looking for me? It's over two years, Trish, two long years. If you were married and your husband suddenly disappeared, what would you do?"

"Contact the police and the hosp... Oh hell!"

"Exactly. So there's got to be a reason why she didn't do that. Perhaps our marriage was in trouble. Perhaps we were in the process of divorcing. There may be other reasons but the fact remains she didn't bother to look for me."

"Perhaps you're right. Perhaps you did have a lousy marriage."

"And there's another reason I don't want to go rushing to her even if I knew who she was."

"Which is?"

"Look at me, Trish. You've never known me to look different. But my wife? I couldn't bear to rush back to her loving arms if that's what they are, only to see her shrink away from the monster I've become. If she did take me back I'd never know whether it was out of pity or love."

"Most women--"

"I know, you see past the outside, but she may not be like that. I want to feel my way a little."

The next morning, I thought I might have been in computing. Did I work for someone? I had a feeling I worked in a smallish company. I told Trish.

"It's taken its time coming, but I think your memory is starting to connect," she said.

She was delighted and kissed me vigorously before going off to work.

When she returned she had a look of triumph on her face.

"I got the use of a computer at work and looked up the electoral rolls for Sale. I know the address you live at, and do you want to know your wife's name?"

That got my interest.

"Go on," I said.

"She's called Ann."

It didn't ring a bell but I accepted it.

"My children?" I asked.

"There is a girl called Greta. Any others must either have left home, or be too young to appear on the register."

I smiled at her happy and triumphant face and pulled her to me for a kiss.

"Thank you my darling."

I was now convinced that it would be in Manchester that I would find more answers.

"I need to go," I said.

"You're right," she said. "Take the risk. Go and see. If you like I'll take you in the car. It's a long way by train and you're nowhere near a hundred percent. I've got three days owing me and at this time of year no one else is away; I can make it next week."

I was grateful for that: I had been dreading making the journey alone. Trish booked us into a Premier Inn near Sale for three nights. The time available for our search was too short, for she had to be back at work and I had my therapy. The Pelican was an old inn, over a hundred years old, but it was more of a motel round the back.

So it was that on the following Monday we arrived in my old hometown. I recognised all sorts of landmarks as we travelled south along the A56, Washway Road: a bakery, and the site of the doctor's surgery when I was a small child.

We crossed a small bridge and there on the other side of the bridge was the hotel, its front bathed in the late afternoon sun. We checked in and went to our room. I put down the bags and began to unpack. When I turned round, Trish was naked and lying on the bed.

"Come on," was all she said. I stripped and lay by her side.

It may have been February outside, and cold, but the room was pleasantly warm and we did not need covers. Trish lay on her side facing me and I did the same for her. She traced a pattern over my shoulder and down my arm, stopping at each scar while she kissed my lips. Then down my side and over my hip until she could reach no further. She touched my cock and balls, feather light. She smiled and waited.

I did the same on her body, stopping at the same places she had, and kissing her in my turn. When I got to the end of my reach I traced inside her thigh and stroked her bush just as lightly. All the while we gazed into each other's eyes and drank the love we found there.

She brought her fingers to my face and traced a pattern over my sunken cheeks and misshapen nose, drawing at length over my lips and down my chin. It was an acceptance of my damaged state and a love of me as I was.

I repeated the pattern on her face, but when I reached her lips she could not resist opening her mouth and sucking my fingers in, licking them with her tongue, while I caressed the inside of her lips. She groaned -- the first noise to be made -- and her hand encircled my cock, which had risen with the eroticism of the situation, and then stroked me up and down but so lightly that the sensation was as intense as any I had experienced. My groan answered hers as she sucked on my fingers three of which were now in her mouth.

I felt her thigh move. She rolled onto her back and, leaving my sensitised cock, she pulled me over her.

Her hand returned to my cock and aligned me to her.

"Right in, lover," she whispered as she lifted her hips.

Sometimes penetration is so hurried and lustful that one hardly notices the feeling of that first moment of entry. Not this time. I entered her female need with infinite slowness, feeling each inch of progress intently. I did it for me but she wanted it for herself as well. She held my hips and kept my progress under her control. She constantly changed the angle of her hips to feel me in every undulation of her centre; every crevice and cranny was worshipped.

Then I felt the end of her channel. Our eyes were still locked on each other.

"Now," she said.

I began to move slowly outwards until nearly free of her, before pushing in again. She sighed and rotated her hips to catch my hardness with her button as I pushed gently into her. We moved for some minutes, and then she began to roll me off her, taking me with her, so that she was on top. She sat straight up and continued the rhythm we had established, rolling her hips in circles to touch every part of her with my cock, as all the while she traced the scars on my chest with one hand while rubbing herself off with the other.

"I can't... I got to... Oh!" and suddenly she came, falling forward onto me. After a moment she rolled under me and rolled her hips up.

"Now you," she whispered. "Do it."

I began to repeat what we had done before but she pushed my bottom into her and growled, "Harder and faster, lover."

I speeded up and got into my favourite rhythm. It did not take long before I felt that gathering and muttered, "Coming!"

It was almost painful in its intensity, every muscle in my body was tight with the tension I felt as I crested my peak and my juice was ejaculated forcefully into her. I could not breathe while the semen squirted from me.

In my turn I collapsed onto her. I rested on my forearms and we stared at each other in wonder. We said nothing; we smiled into each other's eyes, and inside her I stayed for a good five minutes before my wilting erection slipped from her. I moved to her side, she cuddled into me and we slept.

It was dark when we awoke. We ate in the hotel and went for a short walk round the district in the dark. Some of it seemed familiar but that was as far as my memory went.

However when we stood on the bridge next to the hotel, and looked down upon a small brook, I had a flash of memory. It was called Baguley Brook, and I remembered games we used to play by it and in it, fishing for minnows, finding frog spawn, wading in Wellington boots or bare feet in the water. The clarity of the memory surprised me.

We had a few drinks back at the hotel before going back to bed. We had ordinary, missionary position sex, as if we both tacitly agreed that a repeat of the intensity of the afternoon's activity was out of the question.

------

THREE

Tuesday morning dawned wet with light rain from a uniformly dark leaden sky, which threatened to penetrate our clothing as we hurried to the main hotel building from our room for breakfast.

"I thought we'd start by looking at the house I lived in and then wander about Sale town centre seeing what I remember," I offered.

Trish nodded. "Car?" she asked.

I nodded. "Too wet to wait for buses, and I sure there'll be plenty of walking to do."

She understood that my legs would not cope with standing or too much walking, and my arms would be painful from my stick or the crutches. I needed to pace things.

Trish drove along a leafy road called Cherry Tree Lane and stopped near a large house. There was a 'For Sale' board outside and it had the look of an empty property, looking rather sad in the misty rain. It was unlike any of the other houses round it. They were built in the 1930s, and had a characteristic '30s' look, but this house was larger and much older, turn of the 19/20th century.

It was a large tall detached house, three storeys, with a huge garden. Whereas all the other houses faced the street in long rows, this one was at about thirty degrees to the road and set much further back from it. We drove up the drive to the front of the house and got out to look at the place. A older woman came out of the house next door. Trish went to her.

"Has it been empty long?" she asked her.

"Couple of months, I suppose," the woman answered. "Mrs Jonsson's gone to live with her fiancé. Her husband left her a couple of years ago. I think she was glad to get out of the house: too many memories."

We got back in the car.

"Well, it seems your marriage was going downhill," said Trish after she relayed the information. "She must be getting a divorce if she's engaged to some bloke."

I felt betrayed and angry, though since I knew little or nothing about my wife -- or ex-wife. I realised the feeling was ridiculous.

"Let's go into town," I said, and settled back into the seat.

The drizzle had stopped, but everything was damp as we walked the streets of Sale, or rather the street, there being only one main street. Rather, Trish walked and I hobbled, but I was used to that by now. There were still twinges as I moved my legs, taking the weight on my stick, but the twinges were minimal compared with the early days.

I was about to get my big break. We turned the corner of School Road near the Town Hall and she laughed at the names of the solicitors on the board outside the corner offices.

"Look at that," she said, "Crook and Lombard. I think I'd prefer to deal with a Lombard than a Crook."

I stopped dead.

"Lombard?" I said. "It's familiar and so is this corner but I don't know why. I feel I should know the name."

"Come on," said Trish eagerly, "let's see if he knows you."

I was reluctant. It seemed cheeky to be taking up a solicitor's time on a whim but Trish was already entering the premises. She had no fear.

A receptionist sat in a small room at the foot of some stairs. In fact it was little more than a hallway. She had a fan heater to keep at bay the cold draughts which assailed her every time the door to the street opened. She shivered. She was a pretty girl; I noticed.

"May I help you?" she asked after the obligatory shocked look at my face and her attempt to conceal it.

Trish spoke for me.

"Would it be possible to see Mr Lombard?"

The girl consulted the diary in front of her.

"He's with someone at the moment but if you can wait, he'll be free afterwards."

"We'll wait."

"If you go up the stairs," she looked at me. "I'm sorry we don't have a lift. The door on the left at the top is a waiting room. I'll let him know you're waiting when he's finished with his client. Whom shall I say?"

"O'Toole," said Trish, shooting me a warning look as I began to give my name. I closed my mouth.

Trish helped me up the stairs and we thankfully collapsed onto the comfortable chairs of the waiting room.

"I don't want Mr Lombard to know your name. Better he find out from us, then we can see his reaction."

I had to admire her tactics.

There were the usual outdated magazines in a pile on the coffee table but also a selection of the day's papers, and we settled to read, lit by a single light bulb which bravely sought to counter the dimness of the outdoors. Half an hour later the door opened. As soon as the man entered, I knew I ought to know him.

"David Lombard," he greeted us and shook our hands. "Please come with me to my office."

He smiled and led the way.

"What can I do for you, Mr and Mrs O'Toole?" he asked once we were seated.

"We're not married. My friend here has survived a vicious mugging, as you can see, but his memory is seriously impaired. He lived here before the incident and we're trying to rebuild his memory. Your name rang a bell with him. This is Allan Jonsson. Do you know him?"

David Lombard's reaction was interesting. He looked shaken and then there was a long silence as he studied my face.

Then, "Needless to say, you look nothing like Allan," he said and waited.

"I had my face re-arranged by the muggers," I said quietly, "and most of the rest of my body as well. Patricia can tell you the whole story of my recovery. I only remembered my name last week. I knew I came from Sale. I knew I had a wife and children, but that memory only came back an even shorter while ago. A few childhood memories have come back."

"I recognise something in your voice, but you don't really sound exactly like him," said David.

"They got my voice box as well but that's healed."

"I don't buy it," David Lombard said. "When Allan disappeared we checked the hospitals. Nothing. The police came up with nothing; it was only the Private Investigator who found out what really happened. Allan went off with another woman, though we've not been able to trace him or her. The PI reckoned they'd gone abroad."

"That's ridiculous!" exclaimed Trish. "He was in a deep coma for six months! Then it took more months for him to come to what most would call adequate consciousness. If anyone had contacted Newcastle General looking for a missing person, they would have been told."

"Newcastle?" David looked perplexed. "He disappeared from York."

"Allan was admitted on the twenty-fourth of August two and a half years ago," said Trish with exaggerated patience. "Someone reported three men in a red car getting a body out of the boot and dropping in on some waste ground and then driving off. The witness called an ambulance. If it hadn't been a warm dry night he wouldn't have survived at all. As it was he was the worst injury case we ever saw. No one we could remember ever survived injuries like his.

"No one came looking for him, and no one inquired. Since he remembered he was married, we've assumed his marriage was in trouble and his wife didn't care."

"The date fits exactly," he mused. Then he stiffened.

"Look, I am Allan's solicitor and friend. I'm sorry but I need proof. I have documents which bear his thumbprint. Would you be prepared to be finger-printed at the police station?"

"Yes, of course," I replied. "They took my face and voice away, and broke my hands among other things, but the prints are intact."

"Good," he said and picked up the phone. "Is DCI Sinnott in?" he asked after identifying himself.

"Colin, I've got a good one for you. Could you bend the rules and fingerprint someone for me and then see if there are any matching prints on a document I have here?

"Good. We'll be round." Fortunately the police station was close by.

I seemed to know the plain-clothes policeman who met us at the door but no name came to me. I assumed it was DCI Sinnott, whatever DCI might mean.

"Who is this?" he asked David.

"Can you leave his identity until after the results of the test?"

"OK," sighed Sinnott, "another of your games?"

We went in and I was fingerprinted. The young policeman who did it then took the prints and a couple of documents that David gave him and disappeared. We waited in the interview room. Half an hour later DCI Sinnott returned looking puzzled.

"Allan?" he queried looking closely at me. "God, man, you've been in the wars. Bloody Hell! This is going to upset a lot of people round here."