The House on the Cliff

by Charlotte Williams

  Jean sniffed. “I suppose I must be very boring.”

  There was a silence.

  “No.” I chose my words with care. “But perhaps it would help if you could talk more directly about your feelings.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do.” She spoke with real anger in her voice.

  Jean had a point. If I’d been concentrating I’d have realized she was expressing her difficulty in remaking her life after her husband’s death (“you can’t just mend the broken bit”); her anger at her straitened economic circumstances (“it’ll cost a fortune”); her fear that she would never find a new partner (“a man to fit”); and, underlying it all, her despair at being suddenly widowed at the age of sixty-five. It was my job to crack her codes, help move her on to the real issue at hand, and I hadn’t been doing it.

  She was in a huff now. She began to pick at the bobbled fabric of her zip-up top. It was navy-blue polyester, and she was wearing matching navy-blue trousers. The type they call “slacks” in those catalogues full of smiling, healthy-looking elderly people with dull clothes on. Except that Jean wasn’t smiling or healthy-looking. Her skin was blotchy and lined, and her hair was dirty, thin, and badly dyed.

  “Well, as it happens, I’m really upset today. Not that you’d care . . .”

  My ears pricked up. Now we were getting somewhere.

  “Upset?”

  “Yes. And tired. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “Do stop repeating everything I say,” she snapped. There was a pause. “The thing was, I dreamed I saw Derek.”

  This time I kept quiet. Derek was her late husband.

  “He looked awful,” she went on. Her voice began to tremble. “So thin. Like he was when . . .” She broke off and began to sob.

  There was a box of tissues on the coffee table between us. I leaned forward and pushed it in her direction. She took a tissue, wiped her eyes, and went on.

  “He was begging me to help him.”

  I glanced at the clock. Sure enough, our fifty minutes were up. In fact, we were slightly over time.

  Damn, I thought. She’s done it again. Jean had a habit of bringing up important material just as the session was coming to a close. Although the clock was in full view, she seemed entirely unaware of her pattern of behavior.

  I waited as she blew her nose, tucked the tissue into her sleeve, and settled back into her chair. She was about to continue when I interrupted her.

  “I’m sorry, Jean.” I spoke softly. I tried to make my voice as kind and sympathetic as I could. “We’ll have to stop there for today, I’m afraid. Our time is up.”

  I’d hoped to take a break before my new client, Gwydion, arrived. I like to have a few minutes to myself between sessions to jot down notes, check my messages, go over my schedule, nip to the loo, perhaps make myself a cup of tea if I get time. Or just sit and stare into space, ponder for a while, watch the shadows of the trees play on the ceiling. But on this occasion, I didn’t get the chance. Because by the time Jean had composed herself and I’d escorted her out, Gwydion was sitting outside in the waiting room. She was late, and he was early.

  It was the kind of situation I prefer to avoid. I don’t like my clients meeting each other. They get jealous, and nosy, and start asking questions. The idea that I have other people to attend to never seems to occur to them until they actually bump into one another and have to face that reality. And when they do, they tend to take it out on me, one way or another. Of course it’s all grist to the therapeutic mill, and shows me how clients deal with competition—sibling rivalry and all that—but, on balance, it gets in the way, and always makes me feel a little uncomfortable.

  When Jean saw Gwydion she turned to me with a hurt, accusing look, before saying good-bye in a somewhat huffy manner; while Gwydion, for his part, gave me a sympathetic grin, as though to commiserate with me for having to deal with such a dreary-looking woman. To mollify Jean somewhat, and put Gwydion in his place, I touched Jean’s shoulder solicitously as I said good-bye to her, then glanced at Gwydion and politely asked if he would mind waiting until the time scheduled for his appointment before coming in.

  Back in my consulting room, I picked up my bag, scrabbled through the contents, and brought out a lipsalve and a hairbrush. I couldn’t find my powder compact, so I applied both without using a mirror. Then I walked over to my chair, sat down, and looked up at the white-on-white relief on the wall, determined to meet him with the composure he would expect from me.

  The circle was sitting, as ever, in its rightful place among the squares. But as I gazed at it, I began to notice that it was throbbing very slightly. The movement was almost imperceptible, but it was there. I’d never seen it before. The circle had always rested quietly in the middle, its serene stillness emanating into the squares around it. I told myself it was merely a trick of the light, but even so, it unnerved me. And then I began to feel an intense heat rising up from my chest into my neck, onto my face and along my arms.

  Just then there was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened and Gwydion walked in. This time he was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. Underneath it, I noticed, was a white T-shirt like the one I’d seen him wear for his publicity shot.

  I gestured toward the empty chair opposite me. “Do take a seat.”

  He walked over to the chair and sat down. As he did, I couldn’t help but see the curve of his chest underneath the jacket, outlined by the T-shirt. I looked away.

  “Thank you.” He settled himself in the chair. There was a pause, and then he said, “I’m not sure where to start.”

  “Wherever you like.” I tried to keep my tone neutral.

  He didn’t reply. Instead, he looked at me searchingly, trying to meet my gaze. I looked back as steadily as I could.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Wherever I like . . .” He knitted his brow. For a moment he seemed to have forgotten me. “Let’s see . . .”

  There was a silence.

  “Well, I’ll begin with something that’s been bothering me. Something apart from the buttons. It’s a dream I’ve been having—sometimes as often as twice a week.”

  This was turning out to be a good day for dreams, I thought. And at least this one had been brought up at the beginning of the session, not the end.

  “More of a nightmare, really,” he went on. “I don’t know what it relates to, but it scares me.” He stopped speaking, and started to chew his lip.

  “Well.” I began to relax. Gwydion seemed to be the kind of client who could get straight to the point, instead of having to be coaxed to focus on the real issues at hand. And now that we were getting down to work, my silly fantasies about him seemed to have receded. “Maybe you could start by telling me what happens in the dream.”

  “Yes, of course.” He sat back in his chair, half closing his eyes and lowering his voice to a whisper. “I’m a child. I don’t know how old.” He paused. “But I’m small. And the place I’m in is dark. Pitch-black.”

  His eyes were completely closed now, and there was an expression of deep concentration on his face. I was surprised at how quickly he’d responded to my suggestion, but I put it down to his training as an actor.

  “I’m locked in a box. Someone has shut me in here. I can’t see, and I can’t breathe. I’m running out of air . . .”

  Although he was deeply serious, and I didn’t doubt his sincerity, there was also something a little theatrical in his manner. I couldn’t help thinking that he’d begun to sound like someone from a book you’d find in the “Painful Lives” section of Waterstones—Daddy, Don’t Do That Again, perhaps. But then I glanced down and saw him scratching at the fabric on his sleeve, picking at it, twisting it in an ungainly fashion, just as Jean had done earlier, and I sensed that this was no performance.

  “I want to shout for help,” he went on, “but I know I mustn’t. I have to be quiet. So I begin to count to m
yself in the dark. One, two, three, four . . .”

  Gwydion came to a stop. He opened his eyes and looked at me. Then he closed them again.

  “Five, six, seven . . . I keep counting, until I reach ten.” He breathed in sharply. He opened his eyes again. “And that’s when I wake up.”

  He passed a hand over his face, resting his palm for a moment over his eyes. Once again it was a slightly melodramatic gesture, but I thought I saw something genuine in it, something that I’d seen before with troubled clients. It’s a particular kind of body language that speaks of exhaustion and defeat, of witnessing unresolved conflict on a daily basis. Conflict that you can’t control, that makes your life a misery. It’s the opposite of trying to create drama out of nothing. It’s a kind of resigned stoicism. When you see it in young children it can be heartbreaking.

  Gwydion was looking at me expectantly. Having told me his dream, he evidently thought I was about to give him chapter and verse on the meaning of it, like some kind of shaman. I suppose he wasn’t far wrong. We psychotherapists are shamans of a sort. After all, Freud’s first major work was a book on the interpretation of dreams. And if that’s not shamanic, I don’t know what is.

  “Well, what do you make of it, Gwydion?”

  Gwydion looked irritated. “You’re supposed to tell me, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  “Well, of course you are.”

  I sympathized with his irritation. All this “reflecting back” can get on your nerves. Parroting people’s questions back to them. Repeating their confused, and confusing, statements. But unfortunately it’s part and parcel of the way I work. Because I believe my clients know a lot more about themselves than I ever will. So it’s not my job to tell them what’s lurking in their unconscious. I simply try to make it possible for them to tell me what they know about themselves. And some things that they don’t know they know, because they’ve never tried to explain them to anyone.

  “I’d like to hear your own thoughts first.” I paused. “You say it’s a dream you’ve ‘been having.’ ”

  “Yes. A recurring dream. It gets worse when I’m tense.”

  I thought for a moment. “You say that, in the dream, you want to shout for help, but you feel you mustn’t. Why’s that, do you think?”

  “Well, that’s probably to do with my father. I grew up frightened of him. He was a drunk with a filthy temper.” He frowned. “Everyone knew, of course, but nobody cared. He got away with it, because of his reputation.”

  “Reputation?”

  “My father is Evan Morgan. The theater director. You must have heard of him.”

  I nodded. The name was familiar, but not being much of a theatergoer, I didn’t know much about him.

  “Evan’s a great man. Supposedly. But as a father he’s always been a complete bastard.” Gwydion spoke without anger. Or a kind of anger that was so old that it had lost its fire. “He’s never taken the slightest interest in me. Or my mother. He’s always been too busy working. And screwing his secretaries. Personal assistants, he calls them now. The latest one’s younger than me.”

  I nodded. There was nothing to say in response to this piece of information. A “how awful” or an “oh dear” might have been appropriate in a social context, but this was a therapeutic encounter, as it’s called in the trade, and such lightweight commiserations were out of place.

  Gwydion sighed. “But I didn’t come here to talk about him. Everything always comes back to him. This is about me.”

  I nodded again.

  “The thing is,” he went on, “I really want to get to the end of this dream. I keep thinking, if only I didn’t wake up before the end, I could find out what happened. And then maybe I could get myself sorted.”

  “And what would that mean to you? Getting yourself sorted?”

  “Well, being able to get a decent night’s sleep, for a start. Being able to concentrate properly in the daytime so I can learn my lines. Not having to worry about whether I’ll be able to handle this button business when it comes to dress rehearsal.” He shrugged. “I’m sick of it. That’s why I’ve come to you.”

  I nodded. There was a silence, and then I said, “There’s probably a reason why you do wake up before the end of your dream.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Well, maybe part of you doesn’t want to know what happened.”

  He frowned. “What, you mean because it might be too . . . upsetting?”

  “Yes. And until that part changes, you won’t find out.” I hesitated. “Because it won’t let you.”

  He didn’t respond. Instead he looked down at the floor, a puzzled expression on his face. Then he leaned back in his chair and looked at me.

  “You talk like a psychotherapist,” he said. “But you don’t look like one.”

  This was a familiar tactic, changing the subject. But I didn’t protest.

  “Really?” I smiled, but I began to feel self-conscious again. “And what does a psychotherapist look like?”

  “Sort of mumsy, I suppose. Sensible.” He stopped for a moment. I began to wonder whether he was engaging in some kind of flirtation with me. “Although that dress you’re wearing is a bit . . .”

  I was wearing a dove-gray woolen dress with a sweetheart neckline and pearl buttons down the front. I’d chosen it because I thought he might find the buttons a little less threatening than some. They didn’t really look like buttons at all, more like . . . well, pearls.

  “. . . a bit . . .”

  I didn’t take up his cue. Instead, I let him grind to a halt, and then I said, “Are you OK with these kind of buttons?”

  “Yes, fine. Thanks.” He paused. He seemed mildly discomfited by my question. “You know, I never asked you what your qualifications for this job were.”

  “Oh. Well, as a matter of fact, I trained as an existential psychotherapist.”

  “What on earth does that mean?”

  “It’s just a school of therapy. It emphasizes freedom. And choice. Rather than the idea that your life is determined for you by the circumstances of your birth.”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “Well, I agree with that.” He paused. “Where did you train?”

  “In London. At—”

  He waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t mean anything to me.” Another pause. “And how long have you been doing this—what was it . . . ? Existential . . .”

  “Twenty years. More or less.”

  “I see.”

  He looked down at his lap, frowning. For a while, we sat there in silence together. And then, when the silence began to get too loud, he spoke.

  “Sorry if I seemed rude. About your dress.”

  “That’s OK. You weren’t.”

  “And nosy. About your qualifications.”

  “Not at all. You’re right to ask. After all, you’re entrusting yourself to me. I’m your therapist.”

  He nodded. There was a short silence and then he said, “You know that part of me you were talking about? The part that doesn’t want to know what happened in my childhood?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m going to have to change that, aren’t I? If I want to find out.”

  “Probably.”

  “And you think you can help me to do that?”

  “I hope so. It depends on you, really. And whether, deep down, you actually want to change.”

  “I do.”

  He looked up at me and, for the first time, he smiled. It was a sweet, sincere smile, like a little boy’s. I thought of the child in the box, blocking his ears and counting to ten. I smiled back at him, and then I looked away, up at the relief on the wall behind his head. I was inwardly congratulating myself on handling the situation so calmly, despite the fact that his remarks about my appearance had made me more uncomfortable than was usual with a new client. But, to my consternation, I noticed that the circle was still pulsating gently among the squares.

  I was standing at the cooker, grilling mackerel fille
ts for supper. Normally I enjoy cooking for my family in the evening; after a long day of intense encounters with emotional clients, I find it soothing to absorb myself in the simple rhythms of peeling, chopping, heating, stirring, and tasting. And now that the girls are getting older—Nella just sixteen, Rose coming up to ten—I’m beginning to be a little more adventurous in my choice of dishes. Rose is still a fussy eater, of course, but I’m aware that unless I vary what I put in front of her, she’ll never change.

  When Bob was at home, the four of us usually ate supper together round the table, unless there was something special on TV. It’s the way I was brought up. My mother always cooked a family meal in the evening, and I’d fallen into the same pattern. Bob did most of the shopping on the weekends, from a list that I give him to take out. He followed it religiously, if a little unimaginatively, often phoning me from the supermarket to find out exactly what it was I wanted. He’d always understood, from the start, that my career was as demanding as his and, on a day-to-day basis, much more emotionally draining. Over the years, he’d supported me every step of the way, especially when the children were young and I was struggling to set up my practice. He was good like that. Thoughtful. Considerate. Or had been, before he started to go away on business so much, and this fling, moment of madness—whatever you like to call it—happened. In some ways, the fact that he’d always been so devoted in the past made his confession come as more of a shock—I couldn’t piece it together, make sense of it, try as I might.

  “Could you clear away now, Bob?” I tried to keep the tension out of my voice. “We’re going to be eating soon.”

  “What was that?” He glanced up.

  I bent to turn one of the fish, and as I did, a drop of hot oil spat out at me, narrowly missing my eye.

  “Can you give me a hand here.” I wasn’t shouting, but I’d raised my voice. “Supper’s almost ready.”

  “OK, sorry.” He picked up the laptop and moved it to the sideboard, laying it down next to a bowl of fruit. I noticed that he didn’t close it. “What do you want me to do?”