The Godforsaken Daughter

by Christina McKenna

  “The political situation has added significantly to our workload,” Dr. Balby informed him on their first meeting, tapping the bowl of his briar-wood pipe. “But I suppose that isn’t news to you, having practiced in Belfast for so long.”

  Balby, tall and stooped with a craggy face, and assertive hair more suited to an American news anchor than a workaday doctor, should by rights have retired long ago. The more Henry listened to him, the more the older man reinforced this view. But, as with so many members of his profession, work was his lifeblood. It was hard to let go. Balby had assured him that his planned paper would “revolutionize the whole damned business” of psychiatry, and would “make people sit up and take notice.” Henry had to admire his confidence and zeal.

  “Victims of the Troubles?” he said now. “Yes, I’ve seen my fair share.”

  He was sitting in Balby’s office, on the opposite side of a commodious desk. Its top surface, a gleaming plane of varnished walnut, was remarkable for its lack of paperwork. A Newton’s Cradle sat at one side. He found himself staring at it while wondering whether Balby didn’t believe in taking notes or was simply fastidious.

  “Edie does all that for me. Shorthand skills second to none.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My secretary out there,” Balby said, nodding at the door. “Yours, too, now that you’re here for the next few months.” He struck a match and rekindled the pipe. “You were wondering about the lack of paperwork on my desk? Can’t stand paperwork. It’s all in here,” he said, tapping his right temple.

  Two perfect puffs of smoke escaped the pipe bowl and rose toward the ceiling. Henry decoded the message in the Apache smoke-signal language of his beloved boyhood Westerns. One puff for attention. Two puffs: all fine. Three: something wrong.

  “Isn’t that a bit intrusive for the patient?” Henry said, not minding if he sounded presumptive.

  “Not a bit of it. Edie might as well be a piece of furniture as far as most of them are concerned. She has access to every case file, so she knows them all already. Why wouldn’t she? It’s her job.”

  “I take your point.” But he could not really hold with his colleague’s view. It was difficult enough for a patient to confide his innermost secrets to one stranger without having another in the room at the same time.

  “That damn Janov and his primal-scream nonsense. There’s a glut of them now, coming our way to join the bombers. A pack decamped to Burtonport, across the border there in Donegal, ten years ago. The townspeople had enough and hunted them. So, what attracted you to our little neck of the woods?”

  “I needed a change. Hunted them where?” He had no intention of telling Balby about his private life.

  “The Isle of Innisfree, no less. An island’s the best place for them. They can scream their silly heads off without annoying others. I blame that Lennon fellow and his deluded wife. What’s her name . . . Sounds like an egg?”

  “Yoko.”

  “That’s the one. Where do you stand on him?”

  “Lennon or Janov?” Henry smiled. “Sorry . . . well, interesting theory, Janov’s. But I don’t believe reexperiencing early trauma actually benefits the patient much. Helping the patient understand why it happened and how they don’t have to keep recycling it is a more worthy approach.”

  “Hmm . . . You’re a ‘talking’ man, then. Medicating not much on your radar?” He lifted a steel ball on the Newton’s Cradle and released it, thereby setting its tick-tock mechanism in motion.

  “It has its place, but not at the exclusion of listening.”

  “Good luck to that! Cathartic discharge is all very well, but give me imipramine any day. Cutbacks, Henry, cutbacks.”

  “Sorry, I don’t follow.”

  “We’re here to keep them out of St. Ita’s, if at all possible. The place is at bursting point. Alcoholics and battered women, as usual. Here at this clinic we hold back the tide. Bottom line: If they don’t actually try and kill you, they can be managed in the community.”

  His temporary replacement was flabbergasted, but said nothing. He resolved to do things his way, cutbacks or not.

  “Now, there’s one fellow you might find a strain. He refuses all medication—so he’s right up your street. Thinks he’s John Lennon. Has got the hair, glasses, and Liverpudlian accent all down to a T. It’s D.I.D. without a doubt. Spent ten months in Burtonport with Janov’s lot.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Well, I never usually give up on a patient but this one takes the biscuit.” He puffed sharply on the pipe, thrice in succession. “Were you born in Belfast? Any family there?”

  “As good as. Lisburn. Not far from it. My father still lives there. And you?”

  “Born and raised here in Londonderry—or Derry, depending on your persuasion. Know the psyche well. That’s a bonus in this line of work. Doesn’t do to shift about.” He gripped the pipe stem between bared teeth; his cadaverous face, dappled in the light reflected from the Newton’s Cradle, reminded Henry of a Mexican sugar skull. “Been about a bit yourself, have you?”

  “Here and there.”

  “A married man, are you?”

  “Yes . . . yes, indeed.”

  “How many times?”

  “What?” Henry was taken aback. “Why, once . . . of course, and I hope, my first and last.” He allowed himself to think of Connie for one brief moment.

  Balby let out a laugh. “Good luck to that. Give it time. I’m on my third. The first couple of times, I married accidently, you could say.”

  Henry grinned.

  “We psychiatrists . . . hard bunch to live with, apparently.”

  From the waiting area came the clamor of raised voices. Miss King was declaiming loudly.

  “Please sit down, Mr. Flannagan! Dr. Balby is not ready to see you yet.”

  Seconds later, two curt raps on the door and the secretary put her head in.

  “Excuse me, Dr. Balby, but Finbar Flannagan is here and is being abusive, as usual.”

  “AKA John Lennon to you, Henry. Show him into Dr. Shevlin’s room, Miss King. He’s Henry’s problem now.”

  “I wish you courage and forbearance,” Miss King said, addressing Henry over her spectacles, before withdrawing promptly and shutting the door.

  “Well, he’s all yours.” Balby got up. “I’ll be interested to know how you fare. Treat him as a test case. You must come to dinner on our return from Massachusetts. Beatrice would like to meet you.”

  “Yes, I’d love to.”

  “Right, that’s settled. You’ll be needing that.” He handed over a file of case notes with F. Flannagan printed on the front. “And so to work.”

  “Thanks. Yes, indeed. To work.”

  Dr. Shevlin entered his consulting room to find “John Lennon” sprawled in one of the armchairs, trying to roll a cigarette. Difficult, since his hands were shaking so much. The masquerade was perfect. Long dark hair, parted in the middle and held in place with a beaded headband worn low on the forehead. Wire glasses perched on a beaky nose. He was wearing a black T-shirt two sizes too big and bearing the epigraph Give Peace a Chance, a pair of baggy trousers with a hole in the left knee, and bright green flip-flops.

  Henry held out a hand. “Hello, Finbar. I’m Dr. Shevlin. How are you?”

  Finbar looked up, briefly. “Who the feck is Finbar? I’m John Lennon. And who the feck are you? Where’s Balby? You’re not Balby. I want Dr. Balby.”

  He’d spoken, Henry decided, with a near-perfect Liverpool accent. He’d ended his little rant as abruptly as he’d begun it. Now his full concentration was on the cigarette.

  The consulting room had five easy chairs placed about a sturdy coffee table. In keeping with the theme of the garden, the tones were muted: cream walls with watercolor prints of roses, pale green carpet, two waist-high plants in pots by the window. A room that
, of necessity, had to be minimalist and functional with nothing in it that could be used as a projectile. The plant pots were of immovable granite. The pictures nailed to the walls. The coffee table bolted to the floor. The ashtrays were of disposable foil.

  Henry drew up an armchair opposite Finbar.

  “Dr. Balby thought you could do with a change of scene,” he said, careful not to use the name “Finbar.” He placed his notes on the coffee table. “I like your hair. How long did it take you to grow it?”

  Finbar took a lighter from his pocket and sucked the roll-up into life. He sat up abruptly in an effort to stop shaking, crossed his legs, uncrossed them again, sighed deeply, gazed about the room.

  “D’you want a bifter?”

  “Sorry?”

  “A bifter. A ciggy, you divvy.”

  “No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  The patient’s eyes locked on the foil ashtray. In a low voice he said, “I never held with wonders. I never held with gods . . . I never held with Jesus . . . I never held with rishis. . . I never held with yoga . . . I never held with cosmic truths . . . I never held with the bleedin’ Beatles. I only hold with me.”

  “That’s good. So tell me about the ‘you,’ the real you, Finbar.”

  “You’re like me auld fella, you are. Left me mam when I was four.”

  “Oh . . . ?”

  “Oh, aye, up and left her. He was a fecking sailor, so what would he know? Brainless gobshite.”

  Henry, no expert on John Lennon’s life story, found himself having to ask a leading question. “And where were you living then?”

  “Merseyside. Why you asking that? The whole bleeding world knows that. John Winston Lennon, born October ninth, nineteen forty, in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, to Julia Lennon née Stanley and Alfred fecking Lennon. I got John after me grandda, John ‘Jack,’ and Winston for Winston fecking Churchill, prime minister of Britain at the time. I—”

  “Sorry, John, would you mind if I had a word with Finbar?”

  “Why you asking that? Eh? Eh? You winding me up, you divvy, ’cos if you are, I’ll clock you one. I will.”

  “No, I’m not winding you up. John Lennon died four years ago. So, you are not John Lennon.”

  Henry was sitting within easy reach of the alarm buzzer. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. Balby had been correct in his diagnosis: D.I.D. Dissociative Identity Disorder. A rare condition seen more often in females than males—and all the more unpredictable for that.

  “I know I died four years ago, you divvy. Shot four times in the back with a point thirty-eight revolver, ’cos I said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. That gobshite Chapman . . . that’s why he did it: ’cos I spoke me bleeding mind and told the bleeding truth. Me spirit lives on in Finbar Flannagan.”

  “May I speak to Finbar?”

  “No way, ’cos I left him on Innisfree, didn’t I?”

  “What’s he doing on Innisfree?”

  “You wha’?”

  “Why is Finbar on Innisfree?”

  “Screaming his brains out with the other woollybacks. He went there ’cos of me. I thought I could scream me pain away. But singing’s easier than screaming. And writing songs is easier than talking bollocks to some bleeding therapist like you.”

  Without warning, he stubbed out the cigarette, shot to his feet, and launched into song, playing air guitar as he circled the room.

  Father, you left me, but I didn’t leave you.

  I looked for you, but you’d gone away to sea.

  So I just gotta ask you: oh why, oh why?

  Just as abruptly, he stopped, and meekly returned to his chair.

  “You sing very well,” Henry said.

  “Of course I sing very well. I’m John Lennon, ain’t I?”

  “Where’s Finbar’s father?”

  “Don’t know. Me mam was killed in a car accident when I was eighteen. Left me with me aunt Mimi when I was six. Me dad didn’t want me neither. That’s why I wrote that song. Left me when I was five.” Finbar’s voice began to break.

  Henry pushed the box of Kleenex across the table. Finbar removed his spectacles and dried his eyes.

  “Tell me about Finbar’s parents.”

  The patient said nothing. Pushed the tissue into his trouser pocket and put the glasses back on, taking care to loop the legs round each ear one at a time—inadvertently showing Henry the needle marks on his inner forearms. He laced his fingers in front of him, an elbow on each knee, and stared at the ashtray, left leg going like a piston.

  “Finbar . . . ?”

  “They didn’t fecking want me,” he said in a broad Ulster accent. The air in the room tightened. “He took off when I was seven and she . . . She took up . . . with . . . with him.”

  “Your stepfather?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he didn’t treat you well?”

  “No.”

  “What did he do to make you unhappy?”

  “He beat me ’cos I wasn’t his. And he . . . he . . .”

  The pause said it all. It was rare for a victim to give voice to the sexual abuse he’d suffered in childhood. The shame was too great. Better keep it in the dark and suffer. The wound that couldn’t heal because it would never be exposed to the light of day.

  “He had power over you once, Finbar, but not anymore.”

  “She didn’t fecking keep me, me mam.”

  With that comment he’d lost him, as Henry knew he would. Lennon was back. It was safer to be someone else than face the truth about his young self.

  For the rest of the session, Henry listened to John Lennon’s ramblings. But he’d met Finbar, for a few moments. That was a start.

  He could build on that.

  Chapter five

  Monday morning, and Ruby was pinning sheets on the line. The weekend had been a disaster and she was still recovering from the fallout. May and June had come and gone but the memory of the upset they’d caused her still lingered. Getting their bedding laundered and done with was one way of dealing with the hurt. It was a household task she hated. Having to steep them in the bath, then scrub with a bar of Sunlight soap before putting them in the washing machine, meant an aching back and ragged cuticles for the rest of the day. But better now than have the chore hanging there in the future like a rain-fat cloud, ready to drench her every time she passed their bedroom door.

  On Friday, they’d arrived at their usual time: the twins. Performed their customary inspection of the twin beds, then retired to the mother’s bedroom and shut the door.

  It had become commonplace, since her husband’s death, for Mrs. Clare to retreat to bed an hour prior to their arrival and prepare her martyr act. Box of Kleenex at the ready, rosary and novena leaflets to hand.

  On this occasion, however, Ruby had made the mistake of tiptoeing up the stairs to eavesdrop. She knew for certain she was being talked about and decided to take the chance. But May had pulled the door open at the precise moment she’d gained the landing.

  “What are you like? D’you think you couldn’t be heard creaking up them stairs? If you want to be a sneak, lose some weight, then you can tiptoe about all you like.”

  “Some chance of that.” June’s face at her sister’s shoulder, giving the illusion of a two-headed fiend. “We weren’t talking about you anyway, Ruby.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” Ruby said, wrong-footing the pair. Dinner wasn’t really ready, but she thought she’d risk it.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? We’ll be down in a minute when we help Mummy up.”

  When they were growing up, Mrs. Clare had been simply referred to as “Mammy,” but Belfast had turned the twins snobby. So “Mammy” got swapped for the more pretentious-sounding “Mummy.”

  At the dinner table they discussed their week at Boots department store, May holding forth
as usual.

  “Mr. Ross praised my work this morning.” She scooped a tiny portion of Ruby’s shepherd’s pie onto her plate and inspected it, fork poised. “I hope there’s no fat in this, Ruby. June and me are watching our figures, you know.” She raised an eyebrow, the unspoken “unlike you” implicit in the gesture. “Yes, he’s so impressed, Mr. Ross, with how I deal with customers. He took me into his office and said, ‘May, you’re a wonder, you are. I saw how you dealt with that lady.’”

  “What lady was that?” asked the mother, mashing her dinner up, as if preparing it for a baby.

  “Oh, she was hardly a lady, Mummy. A crude old bag from the Shankill, by the sound of her. She was returning a packet of laxatives.”

  “That’s a Protestant area, isn’t it,” remarked Ruby.

  June rolled her eyes. “Well, of course it’s a Prod area, Ruby. What a silly question!”

  Ruby shrugged. “Just wondered how you knew she was Protestant just by lookin’ at her . . . That’s all.”

  May left down her knife and fork with a resigned expression. “God, Ruby, you know nothing, do you? June and me know what part of Belfast they’re from by the way they speak. Don’t we, June?”

  “Dear me.” Martha sighed.

  “Anyway, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?” She looked pointedly at Ruby.

  “Just askin’,” Ruby said.

  “She was returning a packet of laxatives,” June put in.

  “Thank you, June . . . Yes, she was returning a packet of laxatives with half of them gone, and she wanted her money back. Can you believe it? So I said, ‘What was wrong with them? You’ve used fifteen.’ And she said, ‘They’re good for bloody nathin’, so they’re nat. My husband hasn’t been to the toilet for a week and he’s been takin’ them every night and nat a dickey bird.’”

  “And what did you say?” asked June, prompting like an understudy. She’d heard the story already on the bus home, knew what was expected of her.