Infidelity (2 page)

2

From
: Tom

To
: Maddy

Sent
: Friday 23 January 8:48 PM

Subject
: An interesting encounter

Hi Maddy,

Long silence – sorry. Cold, wet and wonderful here.

You should have received a postcard last week from the hard-to-believe-it's-real Cotswolds. I could move to one of those villages in a heartbeat. (Don't worry – exiles don't buy real estate.)

You must promise to read the following with a mask-like visage. I went to the Royal Academy for the third time yesterday – not sure why it draws me so strongly – and met an interesting woman. Her name is Sarah, and that's all I'm telling you. She's an academic with a lovely mother, who's an Australian. I'm meeting them both for afternoon tea next week, same place, and I'll tell you more after that. Perhaps.

I assume Fiona's kept you up to date. Her flat is cramped, even for one. But it has suited both of us for me stay here and look after the place while she's been off gallivanting around Spain with her girlfriends. She gave me a lovely welcome when I arrived – seemed pleased to have some news of Australia, though she shows no sign of wanting to return there. She treats me rather like a bewildered uncle twice my actual age. I can't see any of you in Fiona – she must be Harley's daughter.

Is the locum finding her feet? I can't really say I'm missing the practice, though I do wonder how my former clients are getting on and I still worry about a couple of them. I will soon have to turn my attention to work, but I'm determined to maintain the illusion of being a man of leisure for another few weeks. I did my familial duty at Christmas. Looking back on it, I think cousin Amanda is practically beside herself with frustration at being cooped up with the kids and not having a job to go to. Their cottage in Winchcombe is charmingly dilapidated, but she's a city girl at heart. Her brother Philip is a hotshot London medico – paediatrics – and here for the long haul. They both are – Amanda's husband has no discernible interest in visiting Australia, let alone living there. He was polite to me, nothing more. Amanda seemed embarrassed by his offhandedness, I thought.

I'm still bracing myself for the obligatory visit to Aberdeen to see the other side of the family. Meanwhile, I'm being a dutiful tourist – no, dutiful is the wrong word. I'm enjoying myself.

Cheers,

Tom

From:
Maddy

To:
Tom

Sent:
Sunday 25 January 9:11 AM

Subject:
Re: An interesting encounter

Oh, Tom.

I kept a straight face, but it didn't help. I'm too good at reading the signs.

All fine here, more or less. The clients like Jane more than I do.

Maddy x

From
: Tom

To:
Maddy

Sent:
Sunday 25 January 7:35 PM

Subject:
Re: An interesting encounter

Hi Maddy,

A bit soon for the tone of doom, I'd have thought.

All I said was ‘interesting'. And I'll tell you why. I have the clear impression this is a woman who doesn't need help. Doesn't need rescuing from any dark places. I'd say she's a woman who's long since worked out her coping strategies. Whatever blows she's absorbed, they haven't turned her into a victim. I find that appealing.

Her face says she's been through a lot.

Cheers,

Tom

From:
Maddy

To:
Tom

Sent:
Sunday 25 January 10:08 AM

Subject:
Re: An interesting encounter

Which is another way of saying she's a human being. Don't over-interpret, Tom. Don't come across as semi-desperate. (Sorry.) Not again. Not yet, anyway.

M x

3

I
might once have weighed a situation like this carefully, self-protectively, calculated the risks, thought of Clare, my ex, who dumped me, ostracised me, and now rings up for civilised chats; or Ruth, my recently-separated next-door neighbour in Winter Close who might or might not have been leading me on; or Myra, my client of unblessed memory, who was certainly leading me on (though no one was ever more willingly led than I).

Yet there I sat with Sarah Delacour in Blackfriars bar on the day after my much anticipated coffee meeting at the Royal Academy with her and her mother, plunging straight in, each of us too engrossed in the conversation to have taken more than a first sip of our drinks. (She had told me she only drank Australian wine. ‘Honour thy father and thy mother,' she explained, ‘and if you can't honour both of them, at least honour one of them. I've chosen my mother.')

I asked about her academic work. Her field was fairy tales and nursery rhymes – history and meaning of. ‘You know –
One, two, unbuckle my shoe; three, four, knock at the door.
'

I fell cheerfully into the trap. ‘Buckle, surely? One, two,
buckle
my shoe?'

‘Have you never studied that rhyme closely? “Buckle” makes no sense in context. Must have been cleaned up, over the years, for the kiddies' collections. I prefer the unexpurgated version. Read the rest of it and you realise it has to be “unbuckle”. I mean, knock at the door, pick up sticks, lay them straight, a good fat hen, maids a'courting, maids a'waiting, my plate's empty . . . field day for Freudians.'

‘You're a Freudian?'

‘I'm not anything that ends in “-ian” or “-ist”. I'm just wandering through a well-dug field, head down, turning over any interesting little fragments left by the serious diggers.'

‘You make it sound like archaeology.'

‘Precisely. Most academic work in literature or classics is. We're trying to shed new light on stuff that's been around for aeons.'

‘Is this what you call exegesis?'

‘We do, actually. Some of it. The textual analysis. Odd thing for you to ask.'

‘My grandfather was a clergyman. He was big on biblical exegesis, speaking of well-dug fields.'

‘Oh, my. A grandpapa of the cloth. We do have a lot to discuss. I believe the Rat of Kent found the Lord and entered some kind of charismatic ministry. The Reverend Rat. I imagine he inseminated half his congregation and moved on.'

‘Religion's not in your personal past?'

‘Not in my past? My God, Tom! Steeped in it, more like. Anglican to the gills. Years and years of Sunday school. I was the first girl to be head chorister at our cathedral. Youth fellowships. Bible camps. Even a lefty student Christian thing-o, briefly, until I encountered the joy of sex. So yes, I think we can say religion was in my past, if you're talking about religious practice. But religious faith? Zilch. Apart from an outbreak of incense-powered passion in early adolescence and a bit of evangelical zeal in my first year in college, I was never a believer. The infidel was always lurking.'

‘And now?'

‘Same, really. I don't fit into any pigeonhole, if that's what you're asking me. I get embarrassed when I hear people using terms like “faith journey” – I can assure you I'm not on one of those. But sacred music – especially choral music – the ravishing festivals, the mysteries, the legends, the miracles, those quirky parables . . . fabulous! A treasure trove for anyone in my game. Remind me to give you my interpretation of the loaves and fishes some day, when we've run out of things to talk about. Anyway, what about you?'

‘That's a long story.' It was not the moment for a detailed account of my messy stumble out of teenage piety, propelled by revulsion at the politics and property wrangles that split my local Presbyterian church when the congregation was trying to decide whether or not to throw in their lot with the Methodists down the road. Later, I joined an Anglican church and became almost addicted to the liturgical rituals and music of the English cathedral tradition until yet another political upheaval split that congregation, too. I wished I had a deeper tale of theological angst to tell Sarah.

‘Of course it is,' she said. ‘So it should be.'

We lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Perhaps Sarah was thinking, as I was, that every topic we raised felt like the beginning of an adventure.

‘So where do you stand on “Ring-a-ring o' roses”?' I asked (the only nursery rhyme for which I was aware of a clever interpretation).

‘Oh dear. I have a sinking feeling. Why did you ask me that? If you think it's about the plague, you're not a serious scholar.'

‘I'm certainly not a serious scholar of nursery rhymes, but I thought that was the undisputed meaning. I remember being very impressed when someone explained it to me, like cracking a code.'

‘If you had bubonic plague, sneezing was the least of your worries. Not even a symptom, by the way.'

‘But wasn't it supposed to be the last thing you did before you dropped dead?'

‘Who told you that? No medical authority.' Sarah's tone was at once tough and kind. I could easily visualise her in a tutorial, jousting with her students.

‘Well, perhaps sneezing is just a childish symbol for sickness.'

‘Nice try, but you're trying to squeeze more out of it than is actually there, Tom. No one put any of that plague stuff about until the early 1950s, you know. Sorry to spoil your story. As usual, simple interpretations work best. This was only ever about a children's game. The sneezing's probably an allergic reaction to the pocket full of posies. And the falling down started out as a curtsy rather than a full-blown tumble.'

‘I suppose anything you study becomes serious, no matter how –'

‘I hope you weren't going to say trivial.'

‘Not trivial, no. I suppose I really meant . . . what? No matter how much fun.'

‘Fun? It's work. No doubt just as demanding as anyone else's work. Same blend of tedium and triumph. Plus the added difficulty of never quite knowing whether you're right or wrong – a lot of this material is so heavily symbolic, it's practically in code. Take “Mary, Mary . . .” Could be the Virgin Mary, with the silver bells of the sanctus and the cockle shells of the pilgrims of Santiago de Compostela.'

‘And the pretty maids all in a row?'

‘Perhaps a coterie of nuns. Or the Mary could be Queen Mary.
How does your garden grow?
could be a cruel reference to her barren womb. The pretty maids could be her ladies-in-waiting. See? Take your pick. There's also a wonderfully arcane interpretation based on Mary, Queen of Scots. Ask me about it some time.'

‘But don't some of these things just start off as meaningless chants? Just kids playing with the sound? The repetitions. The rhymes.'

‘Meaningless, you say.
Meaningless?
And you a clinical psychologist? Don't you find the idea that
everything's
symbolic rather appealing? Thrilling, even. Like men's neckties. Why
are
you wearing that thing, Tom?'

I fingered my striped tie, one of two I'd bought before yesterday's meeting with Sarah and her mother. It was a symbol all right – but of what? Had I thought I'd be taken more seriously in a tie? Or was this about my desire to show Sarah how seriously I took
her
, or how keen I was to blend with her sartorial tribe – my wish to be connected with someone who took such obvious care with her own wardrobe? (Tonight, a cream silk shirt that peeped out from under a bright red coat and matching woollen scarf.) More likely, it was simply a vestige of the persona I was still trying to shed: I'd been conditioned to feel comfortable, safe, in a tie.

I tore the thing off and stuffed it in my pocket.

‘Did you do that to please me or you?'

‘Don't interpret, just observe.'

‘I like that. Except that I've built a career on observing
and
interpreting.'

I know about careers built on interpretation. It is the occupational hazard of psychologists, and many other professionals as well – analysis, explanations, answers. Most of us are so intent on our quest for answers, we fail to notice that over-interpretation is a hazard to our emotional and intellectual health. Analysis, explanations, answers – the great seducers of the academy, and of my profession in particular. The great destroyers of the mysteries of intimacy, too.

Back before I stepped away from my counselling practice, back before my friend and neighbour Rich Abel shocked me by leaving his wife for his gay lover (later disappearing into thin air), back before I yielded to the blandishments of a predatory client (so easy to say ‘predatory' now, with Myra nowhere in sight to make her counteraccusations) . . . back before any of that, I had reached a point of declaring to myself that I might do well to take each moment as it came, examined but unexplained. I even went so far as to convince myself that the mysteries of life are mostly sweet, and that trying too hard to make sense of them might be to miss the point. That was not a good line for a clinician whose clients yearned for simple certainties.

All I said to Sarah was: ‘So have I, but I'm taking a rest from it.'

‘Really? I think you'd better tell me the story of how you come to be taking a rest from it.'

So I did. I told her, without restraint, about my relationship with Myra, a married client who spent months using our sessions to flirt with me, in word and deed, spurred on by my half-hearted objections until, one night and one night only, we fell into bed together (if you can call the sofa in my office a bed). Appalled by my own stupidity, I terminated our professional relationship. Soon afterwards, Myra lodged an official complaint about my misconduct. Although she later withdrew it, presumably to avoid the embarrassment of having to front a hearing, her withdrawal came too late to save my bacon: I'd already admitted everything to the Health Care Complaints Commission. Rather than wait to see if any disciplinary action might be taken, I was advised by a sympathetic member of the commission's staff to let my professional registration lapse for a year or so, and then reapply.

Part of me had wanted a break from clinical practice anyway. (I knew burnout when I saw it, even in myself.) So I packed up my stuff, installed a locum, left my affairs in the hands of my loyal assistant, Maddy, and surrendered myself to the tender mercies of a Qantas flight crew. (I experience international air travel as an exercise in the mass infantilisation of adults – tucked up, fed regularly and encouraged to sleep by such manipulations as dim lighting and oxygen deprivation. Just what my bruised soul needed.)

Work had not yet become an issue, but soon would. In Sydney, I had dabbled in motoring journalism as a sideline to my increasingly frustrating professional life. I had written a monthly column on the psychology of cars and driving for a motoring magazine edited by a neighbour, and I'd half hoped to find some of that kind of work over here, but I was open to anything, really.

Sarah received my tale with an enigmatic smile. She placed her hand over mine and said absolutely nothing.

‘No comment?' I asked, and wished I hadn't.

She looked at her watch and stood up. ‘I'm fascinated by the story, of course, and grateful to have been told it. But no comment, no. What would you expect me to say? Anyway, I have a train to catch. I'm paying for our drinks. I invited you, remember. Will you walk with me to Waterloo? Ten minutes.'

(Did she think I might have been reluctant? That ten minutes was a selling point?)

She took my arm and we walked in companionable silence; our breath clouded and mingled in the damp evening air.

‘Do you need to buy a ticket?' I enquired as we approached the entrance to the Waterloo station concourse.

‘I have a season ticket. This is a weekly ritual. Don't come any further.'

She offered me both cheeks to be kissed. ‘Please come to dinner at my place on Wednesday night,' she said. ‘Another little ritual. Three of my old university friends. We do this once a month. Call me on Monday and I'll give you the address.'