The Winter Sea (Slains, #1)(64)
However irritated I had been with Stuart yesterday, there simply was no way that I could go on being mad at him when he did things like this. Nor could I muster more than faint exasperation when, a little later, Dr Weir phoned up and started off with, ‘I ran into Stuie Keith coming out of the Killie, and he said he’d left you fast asleep, and so I thought I’d best call first.’
Trust Stuart, I thought, to put his own twist on what had happened. But I was glad to finally hear the doctor’s voice.
‘I’ve been away a few days,’ he said, ‘visiting my brother, but I’ve done a bit of reading on the subject of genetic memory and I’ve found a few things that might interest you. I could come round right now, if that’s all right?’
It was more than all right. I’d been waiting to talk to him, wanting to hear his opinion on what I’d discovered in Edinburgh. There wasn’t anybody else I could talk to about it, really—no one else who’d listen in the patient, non- judgmental manner of a trained physician and be able to discuss things from the medical perspective.
I had the tea brewed by the time he arrived with a folder of what looked like photocopied pages from assorted books. And before he could tell me what he’d found, I told him my news about Mr Hall’s letter describing how he’d brought Sophia to Slains.
Dr Weir was delighted. ‘That’s wonderful. Wonderful, lass. I’d have never believed you could find such a thing. And it actually said that she came from the west, and that both of her parents had died in connection with Darien?’
‘Yes.’
‘How incredible.’ Shaking his head, he said, ‘Well, there you are. There’s your proof that you’re not going mad.’ He smiled. ‘You simply have the memory of your ancestor.’
I knew, deep down, that he was right. I even shared his obvious excitement at my find, but it was tempered by a sense of hesitation. I wasn’t sure I wanted such a gift, or knew the way to deal with all its implications. And my mind was still resisting the idea. ‘How could something like that happen?’
‘Well, it has to be genetic. Do you know much about DNA?’
‘Just what I see on crime shows.’
‘Ah.’ He settled in, balancing his folder for the moment on the broad arm of his chair. ‘Let’s start with the gene, which is the basic unit of inheritance. A gene is nothing but a length of DNA, and we’ve thousands of genes in our bodies. Half of our genes we inherit,’ he said, ‘from our mother, and half from our father. The mix is unique. It determines a whole range of characteristics: your eye color, hair color, whether you’re left- or right-handed.’ He paused. ‘Countless things, even your chance of developing certain diseases, are passed down to you in your genes from your parents, who got their own genes from their parents and so on. Your nose may be the same shape as your great-great-great-great grandmother’s. And if a nose can be inherited,’ he said, ‘who knows what else might be?’
‘But surely noses aren’t the same as memories.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s been discovered, so I’ve learned, that there’s a gene that plays a part in making people thrill-seekers, or not. My eldest daughter, now, she always loved a bit of danger, from the time that she was born. Always climbing, she was—we had to harness her to keep her in the pram. She climbed out of her cot, up the bookcases, everywhere. Now that she’s grown, she climbs mountains, and jumps out of airplanes. Where did she get that from? I don’t know. Not her environment,’ he told me, with a certain smile. ‘My wife and I are hardly what you’d call the mountaineering type.’
I shared the smile, imagining the gnome-like doctor or his wife suspended from a cliff by ropes.
‘My point,’ he said, ‘is that some aspects of our nature, of our temperament, are clearly carried in our genes. And memory, surely, is no more intangible than temperament.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
He reached to open up his folder and began to sort the photocopied pages. ‘I did find some very interesting articles on the subject. For instance, here’s a piece by an American professor who believes that the abilities of some savants— autistic savants, who are mentally and socially shut off from all the rest of us, and yet have these strange, unexplainable gifts in one area, music, or maths, for example—this professor thinks their abilities may be the product of some form of genetic memory. He actually uses the term.
‘And here’s another piece that caught my fancy. I tried to keep strictly to science, but even though this is a bit more new-age, it did raise what I thought were some valid possibilities. It suggests that the entire past-life phenomenon, where people are “regressed” under hypnosis and recall what they believe are former lives in other bodies, may in fact be nothing more than their remembering the lives of their own ancestors.’ He handed me the folder, sitting back again to watch me while I sifted through the articles myself. Then he said, ‘Maybe I should start my own wee study, hmm?’
‘With me as your subject, you mean?’ I was briefly amused by the thought. ‘I’m not sure how much use I’d be to science.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Well, there’d be no way to prove just how much of the story was coming from memory, and how much was my own creation,’ I said, thinking now of how I had deliberately brought Captain Gordon back into the plot to stir the waters. That had come from my frustration with Stuart and Graham, and not from Sophia. ‘The family history details, fair enough, those can be checked, but when it comes to things like dialogue…’