‘No.’
‘Do you remember anything about when your father died? Do you remember the news being brought?’
I had to think about that. My father hadn’t really been killed until I was turned six. That is, I knew he was killed after we’d been blitzed out of Keyham and gone to live at Sangerford, because he died in June 1943, and my brother was born in the September, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember coming home from school and being told, or seeing Mother get a telegram and collapse, or even hearing of it second hand from Lucy Nye.
‘No,’ I said, still thinking.
‘It’s not unnatural. Your memory is remarkably good. It’s most exceptional in that you have hardly had to hesitate over a date or anything.’
‘No?’ I said. So I was being too pat.
‘And do you remember anything of your mother’s death?’
‘I remember being told. But I wasn’t there. I’d been evacuated to this bungalow in Sangerford, near Liskeard where my aunt Lucy lived. Mother was – was going to join us but she left it too late . . .’
‘Well,’ he said, rising. ‘I think that’s a very good preliminary talk. On Friday perhaps we shall be able to go into a little more detail.’
He helped me on with my coat and saw me out. It was still raining, but I walked to the tube instead of spending money on a taxi.
I played poker again on the following Saturday. It was much the same crowd. I won six pounds. I was coming along fast. Except for the film director and Alistair MacDonald, they weren’t all that good. They weren’t mathematical about it. They went by ‘hunches’ and by watching how many cards their neighbours drew. They’d never get any better. All the same I didn’t really enjoy playing. It was too nerve-racking.
The Friday visit to Dr Roman had run on the same track as the first. I did the talking, he asked the questions. They were the sort of questions I’d have asked anybody for nothing, not expecting to be paid. It was such a bogus business; we could have worked it all out over a cup of coffee in an espresso bar for eightpence each. This man put his name on a brass plate and people paid him pounds just to sit on his couch and talk. It made you think. Maybe I had been an honest citizen, just taking money out of tills.
When it was over for the day he had offered me a cigarette and said: ‘You’ve done well so far, Mrs Rutland. It always heartens me to be trying to help someone of your calibre.’
‘My – er—’
‘Well, for a patient to benefit from psychiatric treatment at all, he or she must be intelligent. It’s simply a waste of time working on dullards.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Please don’t think me patronizing. But I do feel you have a quick and clear brain. It stimulates an analyst, to work with you.’
I gave him a quick and clear smile. ‘Next Tuesday?’
‘Next Tuesday. Mind you . . .’ He had stopped and scratched his chin, which hadn’t been shaved too closely that morning. ‘The intelligence in our work can be both a springboard and stumbling block. There is a point at which you will have to decide which yours is to be . . .’
‘I’ll think of that,’ I said, but I hadn’t thought of it or had time to think of it until I happened to remember it at this poker party. Now I did remember it I got a slightly uneasy feeling as if there was more in the saying than met the ear. There’d been something in the way he’d said it. It wouldn’t do to underrate Roman and imagine you were doing awfully well with him if you weren’t doing awfully well at all. It was never clever to be too sure. I’d learned that early in life.
After Christmas things were better between Mark and me, even though it didn’t last. I think he’d probably had a word from Roman that I was playing fair; so he was hoping I might be cured of whatever he thought I needed to be cured of. And also he was very quick to notice when I was brighter.
I felt better than I’d done since when he caught me in Gloucestershire. I could ride every day, and if that wasn’t being free it was a fair copy.
Also Mark still kept his distance. I suppose if I’d been as bright as some people thought, I should have guessed how much this was costing him. But the longer he left me alone the less I thought of it.
Money for Mother still nagged. At Christmas I’d sent her twenty pounds and explained I was frightfully sorry I couldn’t get home; but thought, in the New Year I’ll look for a part-time job afternoons, say, in some shop or something. It would be easy to get there in my car and Mark need know nothing about it. I could work under another name; but it seemed doubtful if I could do anything worth while. Of course you could lay a false scent, but it wouldn’t really ever be satisfactory or safe to be anything but honest so long as I had to come home every evening as Mrs Rutland.
I thought around the idea of a begging letter in the Personal Column of The Times and even went so far as writing out an advertisement. ‘Will a few kind and generous people help Reverend Father, working in great poverty in East End, to purchase a small second-hand car for use about his parish? All gifts personally acknowledged. Write Box etc.’
You could easily fix an address for The Times to post the letters on to, where you could pick them up, and you could easily get notepaper printed ‘St Saviour’s Vicarage’ for your letters of thanks. But I thought somebody in The Times office would see the forwarding address wasn’t a clerical one and might start asking questions. It would need more going into before I did anything.
On Twelfth Night we had Mrs Rutland coming for dinner. I’d had a busy morning. I’m no cook, not really; but cakes I do well and I’d been baking a big birthday cake for Ailsa Richards. Mrs Leonard had been helping me to ice it. It’s pathetic, I know, but sometimes you get more fun out of doing things for other people than doing them for yourself, and even missing a ride didn’t matter compared with taking the cake down to the Richards’s cottage and seeing their pleasure.
I felt fine. When I got back Mark was just in from a round of golf. He kept wanting me to try, as the eighth tee was practically at the bottom of our garden, but I kept putting it off and saying I’d be awful. We laughed about this. We didn’t often laugh together, it was quite a change. Mark had a funny side that I’d hardly had a chance of seeing. Just for a few minutes it was as if that horrible night at San Antonio had never happened.
Somehow at the end of lunch talk of the firm came up, and I thought, I’m not playing fair with him, not telling him about those two letters I’d read; it’s up to me to tell him and then he can think what he likes. So I told him.
He heard it all through without saying anything. Then he gave an uneasy shrug as if his coat was uncomfortable, and looked at me. ‘The Glastonbury Investment Trust. That’s Malcolm Leicester. I wonder what Chris is playing at. Is he trying to get control of the firm entirely out of my hands? Or is he trying to sell? If he’s selling on the one hand, why buy on the other?’
‘That’s all I know. Terry’s never mentioned it to me.’
‘D’you mean before we were married?’
‘Yes, of course.’ I covered up.
‘In any event they should have brought the whole thing, whatever it is, to the attention of the board. It’ll have to come out now.’
‘Don’t say how you got to know.’
He wrinkled his forehead. ‘No . . . On second thoughts it hadn’t better come out – yet. But I’ll make inquiries . . . I’m enormously grateful to you for telling me.’
‘Not at all,’ I said, copying his politeness, and that made it sound more off-track than ever.
He lifted his head and half smiled. ‘D’you feel married to me, Marnie?’
‘No.’
‘Nor I to you. Perhaps it will grow . . . Have you ever been to a concert?’
‘What sort?’
‘Orchestral music. Festival Hall stuff.’
‘No.’
‘We’ll go next week. Like to?’
I said: ‘I suppose it’s the sort of thing you hear on the radio.’
‘Very much. But it sounds diff
erent not coming out of a box.’
‘All right . . . You’re very patient, aren’t you, Mark?’
‘Have you only just realized that?’
‘Patient,’ I said, ‘but you keep on. There’s no let-up.’
‘I’m playing for high stakes.’
‘You want a nice cosy wife, who’ll be here every evening to warm your slippers and – all the rest. I could pick six for you.’
‘Thanks, I do my own picking.’
‘Yes,’ I said, and got up. ‘But it doesn’t always work out. What are you taking me to hear?’
I suppose that talk was about the high spot. After that we went down.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was that next week that Roman began different tactics.
As soon as I sat down he said: ‘Now, Mrs Rutland, I think we’ve been making enough progress these last two weeks to pass on to the next stage. It’s very simple really, and really very much the same. But I shall stop asking you to tell me about your life and instead I just want you to talk. In the course of the hour I shall put one or two questions to you or perhaps even just one or two words – and I shall ask you to talk about whatever ideas come into your head as a result of that question or that word. I don’t want you to reason anything out, I just want you to say the first thing that comes to you, even if it’s nonsense – more than ever perhaps if it is nonsense. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
We sat in silence for a minute or two and then he said: ‘Are you happy coming here?’
‘Oh, yes . . . Yes, quite.’
‘Do you come by tube?’
‘Yes, usually.’
‘Rain. What does rain suggest?’
‘It’s always raining when I come here. Every time so far. My umbrella leaks a pool in your hatstand. The buses make noises with their tyres like kettles boiling. Hiss, hiss.’ I thought that was quite clever really on the spur of the moment.
‘Water,’ he said.
‘Isn’t that the same thing? Not quite, I suppose.’ I looked down at my ankle. That woman had caught my stocking in the tube with her crazy stick. Some women ought to be locked up, not looking where they were standing, and all the time telling this friend about Charles’s gallstones.
I thought I’d give Roman a run for his money. ‘Water? It rains a lot in Plymouth where I was born. And there’s water all round there. Why do they call it Plymouth Sound? The sound of kettles boiling. I love tea, don’t you? It’s the cosiest drink. They were always drinking tea at home. Come in, dear, and have a cup, it’s not five minutes since we made it. Sugar? No, I gave it up during the war. Wasn’t rationing awful?’
He waited a bit but I didn’t go on.
‘Baths.’
‘Baths?’
‘Yes.’
I didn’t speak for a long time but leaned back and shut my eyes. I thought, this isn’t bad. He just waits as long as I wait, and the hour ticks by.
‘Baths,’ I said. ‘Do you take baths, Dr Roman?’
He didn’t answer. I said: ‘Sometimes when I’m in the mood I have two and three a day. Not often, but sometimes. Mark says, What do I waste my time for, but I say, Well isn’t it better to take too many than not enough? People who don’t wash smell. You wouldn’t want me to smell, would you?’
He said: ‘What do you associate with baths? What are the first things that come into your mind?’
‘Soap, plugs, water, rain-water, Boers, Baptists, blood, tears, toil . . .’ I stopped, because my tongue really was getting ahead of me. What was I talking about?
‘Baptists,’ he said.
‘Blood of the Lamb,’ I said. ‘Made pure for me. And his tears shall wash away thy sins and make thee over again.’ I stopped and giggled slightly. ‘My mother used to take me to chapel three times every Sunday, and I suppose it’s coming out now.’
‘Did you learn that so young?’
‘And Lucy Nye too,’ I said in a hurry. ‘Lucy was just as bad after Mother died.’
The hour went on like this. Most of the time he seemed to keep on dodging around the same dreary subject of water. I don’t know what was biting him, but after a bit I didn’t enjoy it so much and thought, let him go and run after himself. Why should I work so hard? He was getting paid, not me.
So we stuck there for a long time, until he mentioned thunderstorms, and I thought, oh, well, this’ll colour his life, so I told him all about Lucy Nye and how she’d made me afraid of them. And even then I had this funny instinct that he wasn’t believing a word of it.
Anyway, when it was all over I came away with a feeling that for a non-talker I’d talked a lot too much . . .
So on the Friday I went all set to say nothing at all.
But it wasn’t so easy because almost the first thing he said was: ‘Tell me about your husband. Do you love him?’
I said: ‘But of course,’ in one of those light brittle voices, because keeping quiet here might tell more than talking.
‘What does the word love mean to you?’
I didn’t answer. About five minutes later I said: ‘Oh – affection, kissing . . . warmth, friendly arms . . . a kitchen with a fire burning, come in out of the rain, m’dear . . . God so loved the World that he gave His only Begotten Son . . . Forio knowing my step. Mother cat carrying her kitten away. Uncle Stephen walking down the street to meet me. That do?’
‘And sex?’
I yawned. ‘. . . Masculine and feminine. Adjectives end in euse, instead of eux. Male and female . . . Adam and Eve. And Pinch-me. Dirty boys. I’ll slap your bloody face if you come near me again . . .’ I stopped.
There was another long wait. OK. I thought, I can wait.
It must have been another five minutes. ‘Does sex suggest anything else?’ he asked.
‘Only dirty psychiatrists wanting to know,’ I said.
‘What does marriage suggest to you?’
‘Oh, what’s the good of all this?’ I said, getting hot. ‘I’m bored. See? Bored.’
It was so quiet I could hear my wrist-watch ticking away.
‘What does marriage suggest to you?’
‘Wedding bells. Champagne. Old boots. Smelly old boots. Something borrowed, something blue. Bridesmaids. Confetti.’
‘Isn’t that the wedding you’re thinking of, not marriage?’
‘You told me to say what came into my head!’ I was suddenly angry. ‘Well, I’ve flaming well said it! What else d’you expect! If that isn’t enough I – I . . .’
‘Don’t upset yourself. If it upsets you we can pass on to something else.’
So it went on. On the following Tuesday we had a real set-to. Then I clammed up and said practically nil for a complete half-hour. I pretended to go to sleep but he didn’t believe it. Then I started counting to myself. I counted up to one thousand seven hundred.
‘What does the word woman suggest to you?’
‘Woman? Well . . . just woman.’
I relaxed and dreamed about jumping a hurdle.
‘Woman,’ he said much later. ‘Doesn’t it suggest anything?’
‘Yes . . . Venus de Milo. Bitch. Cow. I once saw a dog run over in the street. I was the first one to get to it because it was still yelping and it bit through the arm of my winter coat and there was blood on the pavement, and the boy driving the baker’s van said it wasn’t his fault and I shouted at him yes it was, yes it was, you should take more bloody care, and the poor little perisher died in my arms and it was awful it suddenly going limp, just limp, like a heavy old rag; I didn’t know what to do so I left it there behind the dustbins meaning to go back for it, but when I got home I got in a screaming row for getting my arm and coat bitten . . . Queer; I’d forgotten all about that. Queer how you dig things up.’
He didn’t say anything. Each time I came he said less.
‘You want to know about sex,’ I said. ‘All this beating about the bush really comes down to that, don’t it? It’s the only thing any of your trade are interested in. Well
, all I can tell you is I’m not. Mark wanted me to come to see you because I won’t sleep with him! That’s what he told you, isn’t it? Well, it’s the truth! But I don’t aim to be put in a glass case or stared at through a microscope – a sort of – of freak at a side-show – simply because I have my own likes and dislikes and choose to stick to them! See? Everything I’ve said you’ve tried to twist round to one meaning, haven’t you? I know your sort. Most men have pretty dirty minds, but psycho-analysts are in a class by themselves! God, I wouldn’t like to be your wife! Have you a wife?’
After a while he said: ‘Go on, say exactly what you think. But try to relax while you’re saying it. Don’t tense up. Remember you won’t shock me.’
Oh, won’t I, I thought. I could if I really got going. All those filthy rhymes that Louise taught me. Your kind don’t know the half.
He said: ‘Tell me one thing, Mrs Rutland. Apart from this question of – not wanting your husband, are you happy generally speaking, in other ways?’
I kept my mouth shut this time.
‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, do you feel you’re experiencing and enjoying life to the full?’
‘Why shouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, I’d be surprised if you do.’
‘That’s your opinion, isn’t it?’
‘I suspect that for a good deal of the time you live in a sort of glass case, not knowing real enthusiasm or genuine emotion; or feeling them perhaps at second hand, feeling them sometimes because you think you ought to, not because you really do.’
‘Thanks, I’m sure.’
‘Try not to be offended. I want to help. Don’t you sometimes slightly pride yourself on being withdrawn from life? Don’t you sometimes feel rather superior about people whose feelings get the better of them? – or ashamed when you give way to them yourself?’
I shrugged and looked at my watch.
‘And isn’t that pity or feeling of superiority an attempt to rationalize a deeper sensation, an overreaction if you like against a feeling of envy?’
‘D’you like hysterical people? I don’t.’
‘I wasn’t talking of hysteria but of genuine natural emotion, which is essential in a balanced liberated human being.’
Marnie Page 17
