by Ron Elliott
‘Oh Gillian.’
‘Yeah, well. Fuck, eh. Cops, welfare, ambulances. Investigations. Anyway, she was my client as part of Mental Health. Once Ernie died, she was supposed to be removed from our case list. No service. Bastards. Anyway, so I kept seeing her and the kids, off the books, you know. Over the years, whatever job I was doing or whoever I worked for, I kept in touch. She’s this amazing survivor woman. She tried to tough it out from the start. Focus on the kids, take on board how her husband’s illness wasn’t her fault. She’s a battler. But her kids. A mess. Before you know it, well not before you know it, there was years of work, getting them into support. Before you know it, her oldest son has committed suicide, her daughter has schizophrenia too – nature/nurture, who gives a shit, right? Now the youngest has overdosed. A fatal.’
‘Gillian!’
‘Yeah, about six months ago. Another story in the naked city. I didn’t see it coming. I mean we knew about the drugs but I couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do anything for those kids. Nothing I could come up with. Various departments, caseworkers, so many people over the years. I can’t even make any sense to her about her life, about the awful events of her life, the vicious torture of it. I mean you can’t even begin to make a happy narrative of it. You know, “At least the milk comes.” “At least you’ve still got both legs.” She doesn’t crack, not really. She’s like made of emotional titanium. Is that the strongest metal? Every night. She comes home from work, she starts drinking and at a certain point she starts weeping until it’s time for bed. Depression, yes. I can’t help her. She doesn’t want drugs apart from the alcohol. During the day, at work, she’s fine. Cups of tea. Busy. She copes. Her daughter is living with her, taking her meds. Every night, she drinks, she cries. From the start I haven’t made one bit of difference. Not saved her kids or helped her pain. Fifteen years of useless fucking talk.’
‘Not useless, I’m sure.’
‘Sure, are you?’
Iris said, ‘We can’t cure everyone.’
‘Who said? Do you believe that?’
‘I think we aren’t an infinite number of psychologists with an infinite number of hours.’
‘Glib bullshit. I fix people. That’s why I got into this. To fix people.’
‘That’s an incredibly high standard to set yourself.’
‘You should talk. You’re a machine.’
‘Not. Okay, well, she keeps coming back to you, doesn’t she?’
‘A bad habit.’
‘You must offer her something. Maybe something she can hold onto. A constant in her life. Maybe you’re the one person who understands. Really understands all of it, in detail, from the beginning. She wouldn’t have to re-explain with you. You know what she’s been through. What she’s going through. You’re her witness.’
Gillian looked dubious, but not resistant.
‘You’re in her corner. Over all these years. Maybe in the end we all need at least one sympathetic ear. A shoulder. Maybe it’s enough. Maybe that’s all she’s got. You’re all she’s got. Can you imagine if she didn’t have you?’
‘All right.’
‘All right?’
‘Well, it makes sense. It seems to me it might be a useful way of thinking about it, cognitively speaking. We’ll see if it makes any difference to my inner workings.’ Gillian examined her empty glass. ‘My non-figurative glass is definitely completely empty. Another?’
‘I’m good.’
‘Don’t you judge me!’
Iris was taken aback. Then Gillian guffawed.
Iris said, ‘You set tests.’
‘Yes. Trust issues.’
‘Some of them are traps.’
Gillian grinned. ‘You keep passing the tests.’
Iris said, ‘If you want another drink go ahead. I’m not sharing my Quaaludes.’
‘Those were the days. Marijuana didn’t cause psychosis, sex didn’t kill. It only broke your heart.’ Gillian sighed. ‘Why do I only remember my failures?’
‘The sex or the dope?’
‘Sex with dopes.’
‘We remember our failures because it’s how we’re programmed. Survival for hundreds of thousands of years has depended on remembering pain, death, the mistakes. Our wiring privileges pain.’
‘We have to sleep at night, surely, without drugging ourselves.’
Iris stood. ‘Really? Who told you that?’
Gillian grimaced.
Iris said, ‘It’s been a long few days since I was nearly blown up.’
‘Do you want to talk about it? I owe you a shoulder.’
Iris smiled, shook her head.
Gillian said, ‘I’m not only loud and gauche. I can do gent till and sub till.’
‘It’s nothing to do with you. Truth is, I don’t think I can take counselling from a woman. I’m not being sexist. Mother issues. Please, don’t start. I’m too old to be cured of my mother.’
Chapter eight
Only the burglar light was on. The rest of the house was dark. Iris noticed that the gardener had been, leaving the smell of fresh mowed lawn in the warm summer night. She looked up to the sky, wondering whether Mars was visible, if James knew where to point amongst the litter of stars. She heard a car and turned to the street where a Mercedes four-wheel drive was parked across the driveway. The veranda security light came on, illuminating Iris where stood.
The passenger door opened, triggering the interior light in the Mercedes. It was Mathew and June, Roland Hyland’s wife. She gave a wave. Mathew closed the passenger door and came down the driveway.
‘Hello darling,’ he said, tiredly.
‘Was that June Hyland?’
‘Yes, she gave me a lift home from the city.’ He went to unlock the front door. ‘Another long day.’
‘Yes.’ She followed him in.
Mathew said, ‘We made a huge breakthrough, so had dinner in the city. It was too late to ride home – not after the wine.’ Mathew went through the lounge and into his study with his briefcase.
Iris followed to his study door.
She said, ‘June was at dinner?’
‘Good lord, no.’ He was emptying papers from the briefcase, laying the stack on the desk, his back to her. ‘She came by to pick up Roly. She works in the city at the Arts building. Roly was working on so she dropped me off. They live down along the river. You know that.’
‘Yes, I suppose I do. Yes.’
Mathew came towards her but kept on past to the kitchen. ‘We’ve had a breakthrough on the Nullabin Peninsula. The local people have agreed.’
Iris followed him, leaving her own work bag outside her office door.
‘All hands to the pump before they change their minds, or a greenie group digs up the contrary family members. The younger ones are a bit put out. Leave cancelled. Flights to and from, lots of paperwork before anyone changes their mind. We’ve got state-government backing. In fact the premier has taken a special interest. Jobs, jobs, jobs.’ Mathew went through to the toilet in the laundry.
Iris opened the fridge to discover the same lack of food as the previous night. She took out some mineral water, sliced a lime.
Mathew came from the laundry, smelling of the lavender soap they kept by the back door.
‘This is big, even for us. I’ll have to fly up in the morning. Wave the flag, make sure no one trips over their shoelaces.’ He put on the kettle, took out cups. ‘Tea?’
‘How early?’
‘First thing.’
‘Would you like mindless television and biscuits?’
‘I can’t. I have papers. A stack.’
‘How about an early night and mindless sex?’
He stopped making the tea, blinked at her.
She smiled, to push up the joke, remove any trace of pleading.
He sounded regretful. ‘Oh, I can’t, darling. I’ve simply got too much to get done.’ He came to rest his hand on her shoulder. ‘When I get back, let’s make time for ourselves, sta
y in, give each other a good seeing to?’
She smiled again.
He kissed her, rather chastely, on the lips, patted her shoulder, once, then two more times, before turning back to the tea. ‘Rosemarie called,’ he said. ‘In the afternoon.’
‘Oh.’
‘She’s doing very well. She’s eager for her exam results. She’s not back until Christmas, she said. She’s moving into a house, out of the college. I was a bit concerned but it sounds like two other students – girls from the residential college. There’s this fellow, Brodey. Not a promising name, Brodey. His name came up a few times. I managed to establish Brodey isn’t moving in with them. Just the girls for now. A place within walking distance from the university. Has she mentioned Brodey to you?’
He jiggled his tea bag, squeezing out the excess moisture with a teaspoon before depositing it in the kitchen bin.
Iris said, ‘I haven’t managed to catch her.’
‘She sounds on top of the world, full of plans for the break. I’ll report back on her new digs when I’m over next on business.’ Mathew took his cup of tea to his study, all but whistling.
The tea he had made her steamed on the bench. Iris surveyed the spotless kitchen. The cleaner must have come today too.
*
Iris took her cup of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits into her home office. She gazed at her butterfly displays for a moment, recalling her peaceful morning in the enclosure at the zoo. She opened her laptop to check her emails. There was an invitation to the funeral for the firefighters who’d perished at the school. On Monday, a state funeral with full honours. They must have hastened through the forensics, Iris supposed.
Patricia had scheduled an appointment with her. Iris pressed accept. She next went through the office emails from Mary. Iris had two clients the next day. Howard Philips was having trouble in his relationship with his wife, Anna. Iris, Howard and Anna were exploring Howard’s pornography consumption as the prime suspect. The other client, Jacqui, was seeking to rebuild her relationship with her philandering partner. He seemed to want to save the relationship, and the philandering. It appeared sex and infidelity would be the theme tomorrow.
Iris had sampled pornography sites as part of her preparation for Howard. It was very easy to google examples once key words and phrases were learned. After the embarrassing problems with virus infections on her computer, Iris found a few relatively safe sites.
What Iris discovered was quite surprising. She did find nasty sites of hurt and humiliation, of drunk girls being abused, of wives being shared, of cheating men and women secretly recorded, yet she also found many dramatised fantasies played by attractive, endowed models. The scenarios appeared consensual, equal in terms of gender, issues of the financial exploitation aside.
Iris found sad videos from Russia, and exquisite, haunting dramas from Japan. Sexual organs were pixilated in the Japanese genre, the dramas unfolding over a longer time with large sections devoted to allure and relationship building, turning them into erotic tales of sex, sometimes even lyrical rather than anatomical or gymnastic or gynaecological.
Iris found lesbian sex, married-couple sex, and porn with humour. She uncovered sites devoted to the woman’s perspective in which young, firm men complied with a woman’s wishes with tenderness arriving in a variety of uniforms, including firefighters. Iris had to admit, amongst the wide range of choices, flavours, and preferences, she had found porn she liked. Yet she could never quite shake the dark presence of child pornography. Many windows hinted towards that evil. It was a shadow presence normalised too easily, if not constantly attacked.
Iris also wondered about some of the sexual positions she witnessed. Was a particular position pleasurable or merely photogenic, for want of a better word? Did this account for the predominance of completely hairless genitalia? Large cocks were popular, of course. Long cocks seemed to have advantages for filming angles of penetration. It seemed more important for a male porn actor to be able to perform sex vigorously for a long time without climaxing. For female stars, breasts were the big thing, enhancement was obvious. Like any academic, Iris had surveyed the literature, finding a small portion arousing, although she soon tired of the repetition.
Iris’s sexual history, before she met Mathew, was fairly average, she supposed. Early fumblings and experiments giving way to longer relationships and serial monogamy. However, it was not until Mathew that Iris had felt the strong physical as well as emotional desire for loving. He was gallant, dashing, handsome, quick-witted and self-contained. He craved admiration and deserved it. Ten years older than Iris, she could look up to him and did. The sex was great. Desire charged them. They raced each other off, in cars, in the country, in rooms. They spent whole days naked, lounging, recoupling.
They’d met in court, Iris a police witness of dubious legal standing, Mathew the Department of Public Prosecutions tyro still. There were further consultancies on witness transcripts, profiling techniques, assessments of witness statements, trips in the country where Mathew’s relatives had dairy farms, lunches at the big city house where politics was discussed while tennis was played on the grass court in the grounds. Then Rosemarie and marriage and another chapter to life, concurrent chapters. Parallel? Divergent?
How does a relationship become stale? Reach stalemate? Stale mate? There had been no massive, clear breach, no incident or signal of collapse. Instead it was death by a thousand kindnesses, the tiny compromises and adjustments making a relationship pleasant and smooth. Pin pricks. Or callouses perhaps. Iris was as complicit in the long, slow silencing of desire and sharing. Things moved to Saturday nights only and then to Sunday mornings, and … Mathew and Iris accommodated each other in all things. They parallel played. What Iris missed most was the affection.
She roused herself. She was still sitting in her home office. Her laptop was running screensaver shapes. The biscuit packet was empty. Iris decided to have a bath. She might paint her toes. She would not think. When she went to say goodnight to Mathew she found his office door closed.
*
Iris added bergamot oil to the filling bath. She went to Mathew’s built-in robes, pulled out his suitcase and put it on the bed. It was always pre-packed to cover four days away, his usual business trip. She opened it, pulling out his socks and his underwear. She replaced them in their drawers, zipped up the suitcase and put it back where she’d found it.
Frank felt Iris compartmentalised. He felt this was a valuable defence mechanism in which she locked down certain unpleasant things while getting on with other things. He felt her compartmentalisation was not fulfilling its function. She had too many bombs ticking away in locked rooms. Or to use a ship image, too many watertight compartments were filling with water for the safety of the ship. Frank left no metaphor unlaunched. She was personally strong and professionally successful, but she might want to integrate it all one day. Compartmentalisation was not good if you didn’t know where you’d hidden the life rafts.
Iris went to the medicine cabinet. The small plastic bottle was near the back. She shook it, hearing a rattle. She had not finished the course of Triazolam she’d taken as she recovered from the fire at her private practice.
She took the pills with water, then lowered herself into the stinging, orange-scented heat of the bathwater. She looked down the length of her still-firm body, to her feet. She had beautiful feet. They were small and perfectly formed. Although her feet were usually hidden in closed shoes, she painted them lurid colours. They were a deep red at the moment. She thought she might redo them purple. Her toes were pretty. They’d all said that. All her lovers, even, especially, Mathew. Iris’s toes wriggled in the warm water at the other end of the bath like little dancing flames. Maybe she should have said yes to a couple of the fireys. She giggled. Were the sedatives kicking in too soon? Iris recalled having wine. Whoops.
Iris, the jack of all psychological trades, had started in post-traumatic stress, counselling civilian victims of crime. She did some w
ork for the police. She’d done some months as a narrative therapist, then more counselling with victims of domestic abuse. Her first contact with the fire service had been as part of the human relations department, attempting to explore PTSD within the fire service. Iris saw herself with big tizzed hair, shoulder pads, pumps, possibly a lime green top in the 1980s. Young, naïve Iris, empowered with American armed forces data and a military PTSD checklist questionnaire, marching into a fire station with the temporary acquiescence of the platoon station officer.
She remembered the reactions of the young, lean, mostly men; their lazy grins growing, their confident eyes turning wary.
‘A pilot study.’
Arms folded. Ranks closed. Nobody suffering from post-traumatic stress here. No one’s shooting at us. They refused to fill out the symptom-related forms that the girl with the clipboard brought round.
But they were suffering. Now we have statistics, of course. Around fifteen to eighteen per cent of firefighters suffer symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Which was more than soldiers. More than police. The only ones higher were the paramedics driving ambulances. It’s a stressful job. It is often life-threatening. Injury from toxic or superheated gasses, risk of over-exertion, and heat stress form higher percentages in firefighter hazard lists. Buildings can collapse. Fire traps and kills. Yet their job description also involves dealing with the dead and injured. Burnt flesh has a certain smell, as do bodily fluids voiding from a car crash victim. They cut screaming people from car wrecks. They retrieve burnt pets. They enter burning rooms stepping on children’s toys, see the cracked baby bottle on the road as they approach the roll-over on the country bend. Firefighters are well trained, incredibly brave people. They are fit and strong and they suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder the same as everyone else. People don’t get used to it. Repeated exposure to trauma increases the likelihood of developing PTSD. No one gets used to it.
