The Stranger Came (62 page)

Freed,
Lucy
tried
to
stop
her
teeth
from
chattering
as
she
spoke,
her
body
still
clenched
tight
on
itself.
'If
you
have
something
to
tell
me,
come
to
the
house.’

'Your
husband
won't
be
there? ...Lucy?'
Wind
stroked
the
fur
of
the
hung
weasels.

'No
.’

'If
he's
there,
we'll
have
to
go
somewhere
else.
Some
of it's
about
him,
Lucy.’

'No,
he
won't
be
there.’

Wondering
when,
or
if
she
would
tell
her
at
all
that
Maitland
must
already
be
dead,
Lucy
watched
the
staring
peacock
turn
and
turn
in
the
empty
field.

BOOK
SIX

Chapter 24

Anne
Macleod's
Story

One
of
her
patients
had
conceived
the
idea
that
torture,
rape
and
unkindness
(his
own
word,
however
much
of
an
anti-climax
in
that
list)
were
caused
by
pornography
leaking
from
his
mind
and
contaminating
the
whole
world.
A
timorous
man,
in
his
mid-forties,
his
marriage
childless,
the
worst
of
his
sins
was
to
work
his
way
through
the
personal
service
numbers
in
Forum
.
'There
was
this
young
man
offering
massage.
A
London
number.
It
was
early
in
the
morning
–
my
wife
was
still
in
bed,
I
closed
the
door
so
she
wouldn't
hear.
When
he
answered,
I
asked
him
how
much,
things
like
that
and
then
I
asked,
"I
like
to
be
knocked
about
a
bit,
is
that
all
right?"
And
he
said,
yes.
I
was
corrupting
him,
you
see.’

A
change
from
the
ones
who
heard
voices, not
that
he
was
mad,
of
course. Nothing
like
it, and
given
permission
by
the
situation,
the
hospital,
the
room,
her
job,
to
unload
all
of
that
sad
triviality
on
to
her.
Like
priests
who
were
perhaps
helped
by
having
a
tariff
to
charge
against
what
they
heard,
celibate
men
listening
and
afterwards
in
the
street
able
to
match
faces
to
whispers
out
of
the
warm
dark;
each
one
no
more
than
a
boy
himself
on
that
side
of
the
partition
for
the
first
time
with
a
tariff
and
a
headful
of
transgressions
in
Latin
to
guide
him,
a
driving
instructor
who
wasn't
supposed
ever
to
get
into
the
car.
Or
like
ministers
who
divided
in
her
memory
into
the
ones
who
because
they
weren't
compelled
to
listen
found
endless
excuses
not
to
and
the
ones,
the
one,
say
John
Gardiner,
who
did.

Who
had
done.
Those
ones,
that
one,
without
a
driver's
manual
in
Latin
or
a
tariff
to
apply
must
find
it
hard.
He
had
found
it
hard.
Thinking
about
him
she
understood
as
she
had
not
understood
when
she
was
sixteen
how
hard
it
must
have
been
to
be
a
minister
on
that
island,
the
inheritor
of
Calvinist
certainties,
another
manual.
So
much
for
stereotypes.
A
Free
Church
minister
on
that
island
who
found
as
a
law
of
his
nature
the
necessity
for
compassion.
Compassion
for
all
the
weaknesses
of
creaturely
flesh.
Yet
still
had
his
map
marked
sin,
guilt
and
redemption.
It
was
not
John
Gardiner's
fault
that
compassion
was
not
enough.
She
had
set
out
to
find
her
own
map.

'Rogerian
therapy.
Trained
in
New
York,'
the
man
astonishingly
said.
Earlier
he
had
challenged
her
to
guess
what
he
did.
'Give
you
a
clue,'
he
offered,
inviting
her
to
observe
as
he
unscrewed
the
miniature
of
gin
one-handed
before
emptying
it
into
the
plastic
beaker.
Beyond
him
she
could
look
down
on
an
enormous
unmade
bed
of
clouds
rumpled
white
under
the
sun.

'Are
you
a
barman?'
she
asked.
She
had
intended
to
be rude,
but
he
nodded
and
smiled
at
her
quickness.
Vaguely
ashamed,
she
let
herself
be
harassed
into
admitting
in
her
turn
that
she
was
a
psychiatrist.

A
dentist
had
confessed
to
her
once
–
at
his
place
not hers;
no
couches;
her
lying
back,
mouth
full
of
wadding
and
clamps
of
steel
– that
he
was
tired
of
doing
his
job.
“A
young
man's
game,
later
you
felt
the
tension
even
too
much
the
fear
of
the
patients:
It
affects
you;
we
have
a
high
incidence
of
stress-related
illnesses
in
the
profession.”
Too
many
mouths
with
evil
breath?
But
he
hadn't
said
that,
had
he?
Going
too
far
that
would
have
been.
Considering
he
was
bent
over
with
his
nose
almost
in
her
mouth.
Later
came
the
sting
on
her
lip
where
he
had
torn
it
with
the
clamp
while
it
was
anaesthetised.
As
if
dentists
were
the
only
ones
to
wonder
if
they
might
have
chosen
the
wrong
profession.

'I
am,'
the
man
said,
'but
I
did
the
training.
When
I
was in
New
York.
You
might
sit
for
an
hour
and
say
nothing. Not
a
word –
and
that
would
be
all right
.
At
the
end,
pack up
and
go
off
and
the
psychiatrist
will
think,
that
was
a
good
session.
You
have
to
be
getting
close
to
someone
to
be
able
to
sit
for
an
hour
and
say
nothing.
In
a
bar,
though,
people
talk.
Customers
say
things
to
me
they
wouldn't
tell
their
wives.’