The going got steadily worse, the Jeep skidding and slewing in the slippery new snow piling up ahead of us until Harry finally shook his head and stopped, cranked the car into neutral and engaged the 4WD, before starting up again and putting her into gear. The car immediately lightened as the 4-wheel drive engaged, and Harry looked back over his shoulder to grin at me
“You know, Jack, I was going to buy a Bronco, but it had manual hubs, so right now, you and I’d be out in that, trying like buggery to rotate the free-wheel hubs to lock them! Thank you Chrysler for Shift-On-The-Fly!”
I had to grin, he seemed so happy, although I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about. But whatever the difference was between this ‘Bronco’ and the Jeep we were in, at least now we weren’t skidding and sliding, the car seemed sure-footed again, and we were actually making some headway against the weather conditions. Teruko was looking sleepy, so I undid her seatbelt and urged her to lie down on the seat, taking her jacket off and wadding it up as a pillow for her on my lap, and covering her with my warm Barbour jacket. As she lay down, she slipped her hand under my thigh, holding herself against me on the seat.
“Thank you husband, I sleep for little while, wake me, please, when we get home?”
I stroked her hair, enjoying the feel of the silky strands, and she smiled at me, yawned and sighed, and fell asleep almost immediately. The car was warm, and I was unoccupied, there was no scenery to see, just snow falling in the dark and the lights of cars going the other way, and I must have fallen asleep myself, lulled by the muted growl of the Chrysler V6 up front, because the next thing I knew the car was cornering, shaking me enough to wake me up. I looked blurrily out the window, seeing street lights and houses, traffic, and no sign of snow. Sai Fong looked back at me, smiling.
“Welcome back, Jack, you’ve been out like a light for three hours! Nearly there, we’re just at Frankwell, so two minutes and we’ll be back at your place. You might want to wake Teruko up…?”
I took the hint, and kissed Teruko on her ear, making her smile as her eyes fluttered open.
“Wake up, little sister, we’re nearly there!” I breathed into her ear, and she turned to look at me, smiling.
“Thank you for let me sleep, Onii-san, it very nice to sleep next to you, you are very warm, most comfortable!”
She sat up, yawning and stretching, the sight of her thrusting breasts as she stretched making my cock stir in my jeans, and shrugged her snow jacket back on just as we turned into Kennedy Road, where Teruko told me I had grown up. None of it looked familiar, nor did the high-walled series of buildings and rolling ground I could see. I asked Teruko what that was, and she looked sadly at me.
“That where you go to school, Onii-san, it where you play rugby for school, and for county, you love rugby more than anything, you still not remember?”
I drew a complete blank; nothing here was familiar, nothing was giving me any flashes or images. As I stared out the window, Harry pulled into the drive of a large detached house, light flooding out as a door was suddenly opened and a figure stood silhouetted there.
Teruko was opening the door even before the car came to a halt, flinging herself into the arms of the tall woman who stood there, my mother, a large dog by her side with its tail wagging hysterically at the sight of Teruko. Sai Fong joined her, my mother hugging her as well, while Harry helped me bring our stuff in, spits of snow beginning as we walked to the door.
My mother smiled at me, and I saw fleetingly my resemblance to her, my eyes looking back at me from her, then haltingly, tentatively, she hugged me, almost as if she was afraid of me; and she was, but not of me; she was afraid I would reject her, that I would resent a stranger being so familiar with me. Teruko was watching me hopefully as my mother and I embraced, waiting for a sign that something had changed. But I had no sudden flash of returning memory; I still didn’t know this woman, and it must have shown in my eyes.
The look of hope faded, to be replaced by one of disappointment, and a momentary sadness, before she smiled again, pleased that at least I hadn’t pulled away, hadn’t rejected her out of hand. I went to pet the dog, a large, muscular-looking black Labrador, but he backed away from me, tail low and rigid, a warning growl rumbling in his chest. Teruko looked shocked.
“Senshi, no! This Jakku-san, you know Jakku-san, what wrong with you? Bad dog!” The dog looked at her and whined unhappily, backing up against her legs to place himself between us, his hackles still raised and threatening, obviously not at all happy about me being there.
“I sorry, Jakku-san, not know why he do that, he bad dog!” At her feet, the dog whined again at the tone of her voice, but refused to sit or leave her side.
While this by-play was going on, Harry dragged in the suitcase from the porch and put the flight bag down, my mother smiling at him.
“You must be tired after that long drive, Harry! Please, stay for dinner, you’re both very welcome, you know that!”
Harry grinned his thanks at her.
“Thank you, Mrs. C, that’s very kind of you but we really have to be going; Dad’s expecting us, and the snow’s coming on; it’s a 25-mile drive home, so we really need to get a move on!”
She hugged him, and then Sai Fong again, then waited while they clambered back into the Jeep. Harry started the engine then wound down the window.
“See you in the morning, Jack, weather permitting! The girls want to go shopping in Telford, so we’ll be here early. See you then!”
He wound the window back up and backed out onto the road, turned, and was gone. Mother shut the door and ushered us into a large, comfortable sitting room with big, soft couches and armchairs, and a large fire burning in the hearth. She had to take the dog by his collar, though, and drag him into the other room, as he wasn’t happy about me being anywhere near Teruko, his growl a continuous threatening rumble in his throat, the kind of growl that ended in someone’s throat…
Teruko was at a loss to explain it; the dog’s behaviour had unnerved her, and she took pains to reassure me that he was never aggressive and must be unwell, that was the only possible explanation. Mother came back and sat down, asking me about the drive up, if I was comfortable, if I’d like a hot drink, small talk and pleasantries, doing her best to put me at my ease, bless her, but it wasn’t necessary; this room was somehow immensely comforting, and I already felt at ease. I leaned back into the couch, following my mother’s injunction to ‘relax, don’t be so formal, this is your home, you know!’, and found that I did indeed feel at home. Teruko snugged herself up against me on the couch; she’d removed her salopettes, and was wearing a short, knitted sweater dress that she must have had on underneath the whole time; it was tight and very brief, barely covering her bottom. She sat with her legs folded and her delicate little feet tucked underneath herself, resting her head on my shoulder, leaving me to admire her sexy knees and long, shapely thighs.
After chatting for a few more minutes, mother excused herself, Teruko following her, to get dinner on the table while I sat and looked around the room, examining somewhere that had once meant so much to me, but was now completely unfamiliar, not even one of those little twinges of memory I was becoming so used to hinting that I had been here before, that this was where I was from. I was still gazing around when the door, into the dining room, I assumed, opened and Teruko popped her head in.
“Please to come, Jakku-san, dinner ready now,” although the delicious smell had already alerted me. Teruko directed me to the cloakroom to wash my hands, and I followed her to the dining room. Mother had cooked what she assured me had been my favourite, Cottage Pie, and it smelled wonderful, and suddenly, now , here were those little twinges of memory, telling me that I had indeed eaten this before, here, cooked by her. Someone once said that smell is the most evocative of all the senses, that a single smell can recall a whole lifetime of experiences; I can attest to the truth of that; nothing here had seemed familiar, but now, the smell and taste of my mother’s cooking were flicking switches I wasn’t aware I had, and now that sense of home was growing, that feeling of near-familiarity, stronger and with more associations than deja-vu, the feeling of recall tantalisingly out of reach, but near enough to sense and feel the reality of it; these were not phantom memories or fantasies; this was me, still buried deep down, but awakening, I was sure.
The meal was fabulous, hot and savoury and delicious, and all the way through it I was remembering those aromas, the tastes and textures, the other associations crowding closer and closer, almost, almost, bursting through. I now had no doubt that this was my home; every sense I had was screaming at me ‘you know this place, you’ve been here before, you’ve done this, you’ve sat here before, this is yours, this is your home!’
Everywhere I looked, almost-memories pushed at me, things catching my eyes and beckoning me, pleading with me, shouting at me, shouting ‘look at me, Jack, remember me, you know me, Jack, it’s me, remember me, try, jack, try!’
It was getting harder and harder to concentrate on eating; whatever was happening in my head was too deafening, too much was trying to happen, overload was setting-in, making me dizzy as I spun and reeled in the midst of a chaotic swirl of the almost-familiar. I stopped eating to rest my head in my hand, a pounding wave of dizziness making the room waver, and suddenly my mother was there, her hands soft on me, hands I could almost recall, the feel of them warm and reassuring; she was my mother, this was my home, I belonged here…
In the distance, from wherever he was confined, the dog began barking, a continuous high-pitched excited belling as he gave voice, something disturbing him, his clamour adding to the pounding inside my head. I was only hearing him with one corner of my mind; everything else was being swamped by waves of something like, and yet somehow completely different to, deja-vu, my head swimming as my brain tried to cope with the sensory overload. A blizzard of half-remembered feelings and blurred images was unreeling relentlessly in no sense or order, a meaningless jumble of fragments, but an avalanche of them, blotting-out the room as they roared into me.