Madame de Gaulle's Penis

by Herbie Brennan

  “Did you say murder, John? Killing someone?” The questions came out urbane as ever, although I couldn’t help wondering if for once I might not have startled him beneath that professional facade.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  But he wasn’t about to let a slip like that alone. “No, come on - you’ve come out with it now: we may as well discuss it. Who -” For some reason he hesitated. “Who were you thinking of killing?”

  “De Gaulle,” I muttered sulkily. What the hell - he’d get it out of me eventually.

  Surprisingly, he sounded almost relieved. He was probably a supporter of the Anti-Common Market Lobby. “Ah, de Gaulle,” he said.

  His relief irritated me, as if my concerns had suddenly lost their importance, so that I added petulantly, “And Madame de Gaulle of course.”

  “Of course,” he echoed, going onto automatic pilot.

  My petulance died. What was I trying to do anyway - get myself hanged? Or would it be guillotined? There was no doubt at all that my mind was slipping away from me and the sooner I got it back the better. With a strong effort, I returned to character. “Oh, I’m not serious. Obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “The thing was, after I sniggered at Madame de Gaulle’s penis -” I’d phrased it badly again, but I let it go now he had the story. “- it was General de Gaulle who lodged the complaint that had me fired.”

  “And you experienced a momentary urge to -” He paused so long that I turned to look at him, but he was merely making an eloquent gesture with one hand. “- strike out at them? To revenge yourself on the authors of your misfortune?”

  It was an interesting enough point. “I suppose it must have been something like that. But the thing is, it wasn’t an instantaneous reaction. The old bastard didn’t say anything at the time -”

  “By ‘old bastard’, I presume you mean the General?”

  “Yes - de Gaulle. He didn’t say anything at the time, so I finished the interview and went home.”

  “I thought you said you hadn’t been home?” he put in quickly.

  “Not this afternoon. I was home again this morning. Does it matter?”

  “No. I’m sorry. Of course it doesn’t. Please carry on.”

  “I went home for lunch

  “Was your wife there?”

  I could usually follow his line of thought from the style of his questions, but his current drift had me completely baffled. “Yes, of course she was. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering if you had to prepare your own lunch.”

  “Oh,” I said. I still didn’t understand, but I was suddenly impatient to press on about de Gaulle. “I went home for lunch and listened to the programme and when the interview wasn’t broadcast I phoned to find out why. Barclay Haslett - my producer, you remember? - Barclay told me to come in again. When I did, he let me know the Director General had fired me. The D.G. confirmed it personally a little after that. The thing was, I didn’t think of murdering de Gaulle then, so it was hardly a question of striking out on the spur of the moment.”

  “But de Gaulle was not present then, was he?”

  “No.”

  “Nor Madame de Gaulle?”

  “No. They’d gone back to the Dorchester I suppose.”

  “So in fact there was no-one to strike out at, was there?”

  “I suppose not,” I admitted.

  “When did the thought of killing him occur to you?”

  “In the pub after I left the office.” So now I’d told him about the pub. I seemed to be incapable of keeping anything from the man. I’d once given him a detailed description of Seline’s vagina.

  “You’d been drinking, I presume?”

  “Gin,” I said.

  “Were you surprised that such a thought should have occurred to you?”

  “Amazed,” I said truthfully.

  “So you felt you had better discuss the matter with me before you lost control of yourself completely?”

  It was near enough. “Yes,” I said.

  Van Rindt actually smiled. “Let me reassure you, John. In my professional opinion, you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing. Everything you have experienced is absolutely normal. In fact, I should have been rather worried if you hadn’t experienced it.’’

  “Should you?”

  He gestured expansively. “You are a highly intelligent man, John. Well read. A good grounding in basic psychology. When someone strikes us, our instinct is to strike back. The Mosaic Law is far more fundamental than the Christian. An eye for an eye makes more sense to the subconscious than turning the other cheek. As children, we live close to the subconscious, so when someone injures us, we do indeed strike back physically. When we become adults, the physical expression of our basic instincts is no longer permissible within the confines of society, but this does not change the instincts themselves. General de Gaulle struck out at you, metaphorically speaking. Your instincts reacted. You wished to hit back at him. To damage him as he had damaged you. To murder -” He coughed lightly. “- the old bastard.” He leaned forward, face suddenly serious. “But as a sensitive and civilised human being, your conscious mind would not permit you to recognise the fact.”

  “No?”

  “No,” confirmed Van Rindt. “The mechanism is identical to that of the Oedipus Complex. The desire to murder the father in order to sleep with the mother, both desires quite unrecognised by consciousness. But in your case, you drank gin soon afterwards. The effect of alcohol is to undermine conscious control, to allow subconscious contents a little more free rein. Thus, you became abruptly aware of your desire to murder the de Gaulles.”

  “I see,” I said. For a non-directive analyst he was doing a remarkable amount of talking during the present session, far more than he usually did.

  “Naturally, that does not mean you are actually capable of committing such an act. In point of fact, you are no more capable of murder than I am. But you are quite capable of thinking of it, as is every man.”

  “I see,” I said again.

  “You don’t feel like killing him now, do you?” Van Rindt asked.

  “No,” I admitted. It was true. All I felt like was going home to bed.

  “Because the effects of the alcohol have worn off.”

  “I suppose so.”

  He smiled again, having brought another analytical session to a satisfying conclusion. With a good fifteen minutes left to get home in time for dinner. “Now, John, my advice to you is to forget the whole thing. De Gaulle has harmed you, but hardly permanently. With your talents you will shortly find yourself another job and in a few months time, this whole affair will be nothing more than an amusing anecdote to tell after dinner.”

  “Yes,” I said, swinging my feet down from the couch. You don’t work in radio without learning to recognise wind-up signals.

  As he escorted me politely to the door, he said, “Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I shall have to charge you fifteen guineas for an after six appointment.”

  Time and a half, with a bit over the top since he was a professional man. I nodded. “That’s perfectly understandable,” I said.

  We shook hands. “Get an early night,” he told me. “It will do you the world of good.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  But I didn’t. I got home to find Seline had left me for another man.

  Chapter Five

  Seline had left a note in the fridge. (In the fridge, I ask you!) It read:

  Dear John,

  For some months now I have been very disturbed by the state of our relationship. I know you have not been happy with my sexual responses, although I have always been at a loss to understand why since, as you know, I have always been willing to do anything you asked of me.

&nb
sp; I have considered this matter carefully and sought the advice of a friend whose judgement I trust. As a result, I have concluded that the best thing for both of us would be for me to leave you and set up a new life with him (the friend whose advice I asked.)

  We both feel this would be as much to your benefit as our own. It will leave you free to pursue your sexual inclinations with a partner, or partners, more suitable to you. I shall not require support from you, or anything of that sort. Nor do I wish that the good aspects of our relationship - and I know there have been very many good aspects - should be marred by any unpleasantness about division of property or anything of that sort, so the only things I have taken, apart from my clothes, are toilet articles.

  I know that once you get over the surprise, you will realise this is very much for the best.

  In a way, I still love you, but only in a way.

  Seline.

  The first thing I did was phone Pat - Patricia - of Pat and Pat fame, figuring that if anybody knew what was going on, it would be Seline’s sister. As luck would have it, Patrick answered the phone, so I was forced to start the conversation sounding like an idiot:

  “Pat?”

  “What?”

  “Is that you, Pat?”

  “Oh yes. John? Is that you?”

  “Yes. Look here, is Pat there?”

  “Pat? No, sorry old man - she’s gone over to see Mavis. Don’t expect her back for an hour or two. You know what women are like.”

  I didn’t any more. I said carefully, “Seline isn’t with you, by any chance?”

  “No. Isn’t she with you?” He was a slow thinker at the best of times.

  “No,” I said.

  There was one of those awkward pauses during which he had time to work out something must be wrong. He said, “I say, old man, there’s nothing wrong, is there?”

  “She’s left me!” I blurted.

  “Who has?” Patrick asked.

  I got away from him eventually and began methodically to check the house on some lunatic premise that she might be hiding in a bedroom. She was not and as promised in her letter, two of the wardrobes were now completely empty. I was mean enough to check if anything else was missing and found, again true to the letter, there was not. At which point, I sat down to think.

  The first thought that occurred to me was that it hadn’t been a good day. Which will give you some indication of the level of my cerebral activity. In point of fact, as I came to realise very much later, I had gone into a degree of shock. I could not believe what was happening to me; and because I could not believe, I did not believe. Not deep down, at gut level, where it really counts. Had you given me a thorough medical examination at that point of time, you would have found my heartbeat slowed, my blood pressure down, my pupil reflexes sluggish and my skin just a shade clammy. At the time, I was aware of none of this. I felt numb, which I mistook for calm. I felt confused, which I mistook for mentally alert (the gin headache had vanished, which was something.) I felt hurt, which I mistook for indigestion.

  In order to cure the latter, I returned to the fridge and ate a goodly portion of cold chicken. Van Rindt once explained this reaction to pressure (exhibited earlier, you will recall, in the purchase of cream buns) as a regression to childhood. In those happy days, there was a benevolent mother to reward and comfort good little boys with food. Then the Oedipus Complex reared its head and Mum became a sex symbol. But the basic habit of comforting oneself with food remained.

  I finished the chicken without feeling all that comforted. There was, I thought, a fair chance I might have a nervous breakdown. To lose a wife and a job on the same day was more than flesh and blood could be expected to withstand. A breakdown might be inevitable, assuming I could afford it.

  Thus, if you take the phoning of Pat as the first thing I did that night, and the eating of chicken as the second, the third thing I did was call Van Rindt. I was vaguely aware that a discussion with him at home, even a phone discussion, was likely to cost even more than an after-hours appointment at his office. But who else could I turn to? Patricia wasn’t home. Patrick was an idiot. Billy Ryan would probably write about it in the paper: BBC STAR LOSES WIFE TO MYSTERY SUITOR. Who else was there? Mortie, with his twitchy wife and his psychological impotence? Barclay Haslett who hated my guts?

  If one thing emerges from the act of recording this troubled time, it’s a realisation of how few, how very few, friends I had. In fact, loath though I am to admit it even now, I hardly seem to have had any at all. No, let us be brutally honest. I had none, absolutely none. Even those I have pretended to be friends in the course of this account were nothing of the sort, but you’ve probably guessed that already. I had acquaintances. I had colleagues. I had no friends whatsoever. The responsibility was, of course, my own. You develop friendships en train of one thing and one thing only - an interest in the other person. In those heady days, I had interest only in myself.

  I phoned Van Rindt and had another idiot conversation:

  “Hello?”

  “Is that you, Nicholaas?”

  “May I speak to Dr Van Rindt, please?”

  “This is Mrs Van Rindt speaking.” She had a foreign accents which Van Rindt, despite his name, did not.

  “No,” I said, in my clearest BBC English, “I wish to speak to Dr Van Rindt.”

  “Who is this person who is calling?”

  “My name is John Sinclair, Mrs Van Rindt.” I hesitated, waiting for a reaction. When none came, I repeated, “John Sinclair.” Still nothing. Enunciating each syllable, I told her slowly and loudly, “I am one of your husband’s patients.” We had, in fact, met briefly once at a cocktail party, but I doubted she would remember.

  “When did you last see my husband, Mr Sinclair?”

  It seemed a bizarre question, but I answered it anyway. “Just a little while ago, Mrs Vat Rindt - I had an after-hours appointment with him.”

  “Then you know more than I do. He has not come home yet and his dinner is ruined.”

  It was just my luck. I tried to got away by saying I would ring back later, but the old bat wouldn’t let me go.

  “What time did you leave him, Mr Sinclair?”

  I didn’t know exactly, but I guessed. “Around a quarter to seven or thereabouts.”

  “He couldn’t take all that time to get here. Did he say he was coming straight home?”

  “He didn’t mention it,” I told her.

  “He would have mentioned it, wouldn’t he, if he had been going on somewhere else?”

  “I shouldn’t think so - I’m only a patient.”

  “No - to me, Mr Sinclair. He would have mentioned it to me. Do you not consider he would have mentioned it to me, his wife?”

  “I don’t know,” I said truthfully. How would I know what Van Rindt would mention to his wife?

  “But you know him,” she insisted. “He is not a man to do anything unexpected. Do you agree?”

  I did actually, but I said nothing.

  “Are you still there, Mr Sinclair?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Do you think he might have had an accident?”

  “I don’t think that’s very likely,” I said. “Probably he’s just been delayed by traffic.”

  “Maybe I should check with the hospitals. Is it your opinion, Mr Sinclair, that this would be a good course of action?”

  I hung up. I could always pretend we were cut off.

  Thrown back on my own resources, I did something that strikes me as amazing in retrospect. I turned on the television. I was in the middle of the most shattering crisis of my entire career and the only response I could think of was to watch television. The programme that came on was something called The Incredible Hulk. It starred Bill Bixby and was about a man who had experimented with gamma rays until
every time he got upset he changed into a seven foot green giant (played by Lou Ferrigo) who could punch his way through steel. I felt considerable envy for his talent.

  The phone rang.

  I stared at it for a moment convinced Mrs Van Rindt was ringing back to ask if she should call the police as well. Then I remembered she couldn’t have my number, which was ex-directory - another of my pretensions ostensibly designed to protect me from my many fans. Instantly I became convinced it must be Seline and had a moment of utter panic during which I defeated the Hulk with a flick of the switch, picked up the phone and gasped stupidly, “Is that you?”

  “Yes,” a woman’s voice answered.

  It sounded like Seline, but at this point panic had changed to caution. “Who’s speaking?” I asked.

  “Pat here,” said Seline’s sister. “Patrick said you were looking for me earlier.”

  I had a mental image of Patricia stretched out on the hearth rug, naked but for thigh-length boots. They were exactly the same colour as her pubic hair. I suppressed the vision savagely. “Yes, I was, Pat. I wondered if you knew what’s happened to Seline?”

  “Oh, she’s done it, has she?” Pat said. “I couldn’t make out what Patrick was babbling on about.”

  “Done what?” By the sound of it, she knew a great deal more than I did.

  “Left you. She always said she would, but I didn’t know it would be quite so soon.”

  I was incredulous. “She’s talked to you about it?” Was nothing sacred any more?

  “Bored the pants off me -” There was a brief mental flash of Pat without her pants: I had to get my head together or it was the funny farm for sure. “- some sort of sex problem. You’re not having trouble getting it up, are you, John?” Unlike Seline, who was serene, Patricia’s dominant feature was a ruthless directness.

  “No, I’m not,” I hissed. In fact my trouble was rather the reverse at that precise moment: a man can only take so much fantasising before it begins to show.

  “Oh, well, don’t get upset about it. You’re probably better off without her. I’ve always thought she was a bit on the chill side myself.” It was a surprising comment. I’d always imagined they were close and loyal.