Therapy

by David Lodge

  Hey, I must be careful not to indulge in wishful fantasies here. She’s probably a very respectable, rather dull, happily married woman, stout and grey-haired, living in a comfortable suburban house with curtains that match the loose covers on the three-piece suite, mainly interested in her grandchildren, and looking forward to getting her OAP railpass so she can visit them more often. She probably hasn’t given me a thought for decades, and wouldn’t know me from Adam if I turned up on her doorstep. Nevertheless that’s what I’m going to do, turn up on her doorstep. If I can find it.

  Monday 7th June. 4.30 p.m. Whew! I’m exhausted, drained, and my knee aches. I’ve been back to Hatchford today. Hatchford Mon Amour.

  I took the train from Charing Cross just after nine this morning. I was travelling against the rush hour, breasting waves of commuters with pallid Monday-morning faces who surged across the station concourse and swirled around the islanded Tie Rack, Knickerbox and Sockshop before being sucked down the plughole of the Underground. My train was almost empty for its return journey to the suburbs. Southern Electric the trains used to be called, Network Southeast they’re called now, but nothing essential has changed on this line, except that the graffiti on the inside of the carriages are more abundant and colourful nowadays, due to the development of the felt-tip pen. Vorsprung durch Technik. I took my seat in the second coach from the front because that’s the most convenient one for the exit at Hatchford, shuffled a clear space for my feet amid the litter on the floor, and inhaled the familiar smell of dust and hair-oil from the upholstery. A porter came down the platform, slamming the doors shut hard enough to make the teeth rattle in your head, and then the electric motor whined and ticked under the floor as the driver switched on the power. The train moved off with a jerk and rumbled over Hungerford Bridge, the Thames glittering in the sun through the trelliswork of girders; then lurched through the points between Waterloo East and London Bridge. From there the line is straight for miles, and the train rushed at rooftop level past workshops and warehouses and lock-up garages and scrap-merchants’ yards and school playgrounds and streets of terraced houses, overlooked by the occasional tower block of council flats. It was never a scenic route.

  It was years since I last travelled along this line, and decades since I alighted at Hatchford. In 1962 Dad had a bit of luck – the only bit of luck he had in his life, actually, apart from meeting Mum: £20,000 on the pools, Littlewoods’ Three Draws. That was a lot of money in those days, enough for him to retire early from London Transport and buy a little bungalow at Middleton-on-Sea, near Bognor. After he and Mum moved there, I never had any need or inclination to return to Hatchford. It was eerie going back today, a dreamlike mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar. At first I was struck by how little had changed around the Five Ways. There are different shopfronts and a new road layout – the florist’s on the corner has turned into a video rental shop, the Co-op bakery is a DIY superstore, and the road is marked like a complicated board-game, with arrows and cross-hatching and mini-roundabouts – but the contours of the streets and buildings are essentially as I remember them. The sociology of the place has changed though. The little streets of terraced houses off the main road are now largely occupied by Caribbean and Asian families, as I discovered when I went to have a look at our old house in Albert Street.

  The sash widows had been ripped out and replaced with sealed aluminium units, and a small glazed porch had been stuck over the front door, but otherwise it was the same house, greyish-yellowish brick, with a slate roof and a front garden a yard deep. There’s still a big chip out of the stone window ledge at the front, where a piece of shrapnel hit it in the war. I knocked on the door and a grey-haired Caribbean man opened it a suspicious crack. I explained that I had once lived there and asked if I could come in and look around for a moment. He looked doubtful, as if he suspected me of being a snooper or a con-man, as well he might; but a young woman, who addressed him as Dad, appeared at his shoulder, wiping her hands on an apron, and kindly invited me to step in. What struck me first, apart from the spicy cooking smells lingering on the air, was the narrowness and darkness of the hall and staircase when the front door was closed: I’d forgotten the absence of light inside a terraced house. But the wall between the front and back parlours had been knocked down to make a bright and pleasantly proportioned living-room. Why hadn’t we done that? We spent most of our lives crammed into the back room, where it was hardly possible to move without banging into each other or the furniture. The answer, of course, was the ingrained habit of always keeping something – whether it was a suit, a tea-service, or a room – “for best”.

  The extended living-room was cheerfully if gaudily decorated in yellows and purples and greens. The TV was on, and two small children, twin girls aged about three, were sitting on the floor in front of it, sucking their thumbs and watching a cartoon programme. The two fireplaces had been boarded up and the mantelpieces ripped out, and there were central-heating radiators under the front and rear windows. The room bore so little resemblance to what I remembered that I was unable to populate it with memories. I peered out at the small patch of ground we used to dignify with the name, “back garden”. It had been largely paved over and partly covered by a lean-to extension of transparent fibreglass. There was a bright red barbecue on wheels, and a carousel for drying washing instead of the sagging rope that used to run diagonally from end to end, propped up by a cleft stick. The young woman told me her husband drove a Routemaster bus, and I seized gratefully on this thread of continuity with the past. “My Dad used to drive a tram,” I told her. But I had to explain what a tram was. They didn’t offer to show me the bedrooms, and I didn’t ask. I pressed a pound coin into the hands of each twin, thanked their mother and grandfather, and left.

  I walked back to the Five Ways and then began to climb Beecher’s Road. It was quickly apparent that a certain amount of yuppification had taken place on the higher levels of Hatchford, probably in the property boom of the eighties. The big houses that had been divided up into rented flats in my childhood had in many cases reverted to single ownership, and been smartened up in the process, with brass fittings on the front doors, hanging flower-baskets in the porches, and potted shrubs in the basement areas. Through front windows I glimpsed the signs of AB lifestyles: ethnic rugs and modern prints on the walls, well-stocked black ash bookshelves, angular lampstands, state-of-the-art hi-fi systems. I wondered if the same fate would have overtaken 94 Treglowan Road, where Maureen’s family used to live. First left at the top of Beecher’s Road, then first right and right again. Was it the exertion of the climb or nervous expectation that made my heart beat faster as I approached the last corner? It was highly unlikely that Maureen’s parents, even if they were alive, would still be living there; and even if they were it would be a chance in a million if she happened to be visiting them today. So I told myself, trying to calm my pulse. But I was not prepared for the shock I received when I turned the corner.

  One side of the road, the side on which Maureen’s house had stood, had been demolished and cleared, and in its place a small estate of new detached houses had been built. They were flimsy, meanly-proportioned brick boxes – so narrow they looked like sawn-off semis – with leaded windows and fake beams stuck on the facades, and they were laid out along a curving cul-de-sac called Treglowan Close. There was not a single visible trace of the monumental Victorian villa in which the Kavanaghs had lived, not a brick, not a stone, not a tree. I calculated that the entrance to the estate passed directly over the site of the house. The basement area where we had kissed, where I had touched Maureen’s breasts, had been filled in, levelled off, and sealed under a coating of tarmac. I felt robbed, disoriented and quite irrationally angry.

  The Church of the Immaculate Conception, on the other hand, was still standing. Indeed, it had hardly changed at all. The statue of the Virgin Mary still stood on her pedestal in the forecourt signalling a wide. Inside there were the same dark stained pews, confessionals li
ke massive wardrobes against the wall, votive candles dripping stalactites of wax. There was something new, though: up at what Philip Larkin called the holy end, in front of the carved and pinnacled altar that I remembered blazing with candlelight at Benediction, was a plain stone table, and there were no rails at the bottom of the altar steps. A middle-aged lady in an apron was hoovering the carpet on the altar. She switched off the machine and looked enquiringly at me as I hovered nearby. I asked if Father Jerome was still attached to the church. She had heard his name mentioned by some of the older parishioners, but thought he must have left long before she came to Hatchford herself. She had an idea that he had been sent to Africa by his order to work in the missions. And Father Malachi, I presumed, was dead. She nodded, and pointed to a plaque on the wall in his memory. She said the present parish priest was Father Dominic, and that I might find him in the presbytery. I remembered that presbytery meant the house where the priests lived, the first one around the corner from the church. A thirty-something man in a pullover and jeans opened the door when I rang the bell. I asked if Father Dominic was in. He said, “That’s me, come in.” He led me into a cluttered living-room, where a computer screen glowed green on a desk in the corner. “Do you understand spreadsheets?” he said. I confessed I didn’t. “I’m trying to computerize the parish accounts,” he said, “but really I need Windows to do it properly. How can I help you?”

  When I said I was trying to trace someone who had lived in the parish forty years ago, he shook his head doubtfully. “The order who had the parish in those days were pretty hopeless at paperwork. If they had any files on parishioners, they must have taken them with them when they pulled out. All that’s left by way of an archive are the registers of Baptisms, First Communions, Confirmations and Marriages.”

  I asked if I could see the marriage register, and he led me round to the back of the church, into a small room behind the altar that smelled of incense and furniture-polish, and took a large oblong leather bound book out of a cupboard. I started with the year in which I last saw Maureen and worked forward. It didn’t take me very long to find her name. On 16th May 1959 Maureen Teresa Kavanagh of 94 Treglowan Road married Bede Ignatius Harrington of 103 Hatchford Rise. “Bugger me!” I exclaimed thoughtlessly, and apologized for my unseemly language. Father Dominic didn’t seem bothered. I asked him if the Harrington family still lived in the parish. “It doesn’t ring a bell,” he said. “I’d have to check my database.” We returned to the presbytery and he searched for the name on his computer without success. There weren’t any Kavanaghs in the parish either. “Annie Mahoney might know something,” he said. “She used to be the housekeeper in the presbytery in those days. I look after myself – can’t afford a housekeeper. She lives in the next house but one. You’ll have to shout, she’s pretty deaf.” I thanked him and asked if I could make a contribution to the parish software fund, which he received gratefully.

  Annie Mahoney was a bent, withered little old lady in a bright green tracksuit and Reebok trainers with Velcro fastenings. She explained to me that because of the arthritis in her fingers she couldn’t manage buttons and laces any more. She lived alone and obviously welcomed company and the chance of a chat. At first she thought I was the man from the Town Hall come to review her entitlement to a Home Help, but when that misunderstanding was cleared up she brought her mind to bear on my enquiry about the Kavanagh family. It was a tantalizing interview. She remembered the family. “Such a giant of a man, Mr Kavanagh, you could never forget him if you saw him only once, and his wife was a nice woman and they had five beautiful children, especially the oldest, I forget her name now.” “Maureen,” I prompted. “That’s it, Maureen,” she said. She remembered Maureen’s wedding, which had been a posh one by the standards of the parish, with the groom and best man in tail-coats, and two Rolls-Royces to ferry the guests to the reception. “I think Dr Harrington paid for the cars, he was always a man to do things properly,” Annie reminisced. “He died about ten years ago, God rest his soul. Heart, they said.” She didn’t know anything about Bede’s and Maureen’s married life however, where they lived or what Bede did for a living. “Maureen became a teacher, I think,” she hazarded. I said I thought she wanted to be a nurse. “Oh yes, a nurse, that was it,” said Annie. “She would have made a lovely nurse. Such a sweet-natured girl. I remember her as Our Lady in a Nativity play the youth club put on one Christmas, with her hair spread out over her shoulders, beautiful she looked.” I couldn’t resist asking Annie if she remembered the Herod in the same production, but she didn’t.

  I checked out the Harringtons’ former house, a large villa set back from the main road with, as I recalled, a rather impressive entrance – two gateposts with stone globes the size of footballs on top. It belongs to a dental practice now. The gateposts have been removed and the front garden tarmacked over to make a parking lot for the partners and their patients. I went inside and asked the receptionist if she had any information about the previous owners, but she was unable or unwilling to help. I was tired and hungry and not a little melancholy by this time, so I caught the next train back to Charing Cross.

  So Bede Harrington is my Schlegel. Well, well. I always thought he had his eye on Maureen, but I’m a bit surprised that she chose to marry him. Could you love Bede Harrington? (Without being Bede Harrington, I mean.) I can’t flatter myself that it was on the rebound from me, though. Judging by the date of the wedding, it took him several years to persuade her, or to pluck up the courage to pop the question – so he must have had some attraction for her. I can’t deny that I feel absurdly, pointlessly jealous. And keener than ever to trace her. But where do I go from here?

  7.06 p.m. After devising various ingenious plans (e.g., find out which local estate agent handled the sale of 103 Hatchford Rise to the dentists, and see if I could get an address for Mrs Harrington Snr. out of them) I thought of a simpler expedient to try first: if Bede and Maureen still lived in London, they would probably be in the phone book, and Harrington wasn’t such a common name. Sure enough, there were only two B. I. Harringtons. One of them, with an address in SW19, had OBE after his name, which I thought was just the sort of thing Bede would show off about if he had the chance, so I tried that number first. I recognized his voice instantly. Our conversation went more or less like this:

  BEDE Harrington.

  ME Is that the Bede Harrington who used to live in Hatchford?

  BEDE (guardedly) I did live there once, yes.

  ME You married Maureen Kavanagh?

  BEDE Yes. Who is this?

  ME Herod.

  BEDE I beg your pardon?

  ME Laurence Passmore.

  BEDE I’m sorry, I don’t . . . Parsons, did you say?

  ME Passmore. You remember. The youth club. The Nativity play. I was Herod.

  (Pause)

  BEDE Good God.

  ME How are you, then?

  BEDE All right.

  ME How’s Maureen?

  BEDE She’s all right, I think.

  ME Could I speak to her?

  BEDE She’s not here.

  ME Ah. When will she be back?

  BEDE I don’t precisely know. She’s abroad.

  ME Oh — where?

  BEDE Spain, I should think, by now.

  ME I see . . . Is there any way I could get in touch with her?

  BEDE Not really, no.

  ME On holiday, is she?

  BEDE Not exactly. What is it you want?

  ME I’d just like to see her again . . . (racking brains for a pretext) . . . I’m writing something about those days.

  BEDE Are you a writer?

  ME Yes.

  BEDE What kind of writer?

  ME Television mostly. You may know a programme called The People Next Door?

  BEDE Never heard of it, I’m afraid.

  ME Oh.

  BEDE I don’t watch much television. Look, I’m in the middle of cooking my dinner —

  I gave him my address and phone number.
Before he rang off, I asked him what he got his OBE for. He said, “I presume for my work on the National Curriculum.” It seems he’s a fairly high-up civil servant in the Department of Education.

  I’m very stirred up by this conversation, excited and at the same time frustrated. I’m amazed how much progress I’ve made in tracing Maureen in a single day, yet she’s still tantalizingly out of reach. I wish now I’d pressed Bede for more details as to where she is and what she’s doing. I don’t like the idea of just waiting, indefinitely, for a phone call from her, not knowing how long it might be – days? weeks? months? – or whether Bede will even pass her my message when she gets back from wherever she is. “Spain by now . . . not exactly a holiday” – what the fuck does that mean? Is she on some kind of educational coach tour? Or a cruise?

  9.35p.m. I rang Bede again, apologized for disturbing him, and asked if we could meet. When he asked me what for, I elaborated my alibi about writing something set in Hatchford in the early fifties. He was less abrupt and suspicious than before – indeed his speech was slightly slurred, as if he’d had a bit too much to drink with his dinner. I said I lived quite near Whitehall, and asked if I could give him lunch one day this week. He said he retired at the end of last year, but I could visit him at home if I liked. SW19 turns out to be Wimbledon. Eagerly I suggested tomorrow morning, and much to my delight, he agreed. Before he rang off, I managed to slip in a question about Maureen: “On a sort of tour, is she?” “No,” he said, “a pilgrimage.”

  Still a devout Catholic, then. Oh well.

  Tuesday 8th June. 2.30 p.m. I travelled by Network Southeast again this morning, but this time from Waterloo, and in a cleaner, smarter train than yesterday, appropriate to my more upmarket destination. Bede and Maureen live in one of the leafy residential streets near the All England Club. It’s entirely typical of Bede that he has never watched a tennis match in all his years in Wimbledon, and regards the Championships as merely an annual traffic nuisance. I’ve been to Wimbledon myself a few times in recent years as a guest of Heartland, (they host parties in one of the hospitality marquees, with champagne and strawberries and free tickets to the Centre Court) and it gave me a funny feeling to realize that I must have passed within a hundred yards of Maureen on those occasions without knowing it. I might well have driven past her in the street.