All in the Mind (31 page)

When he arrived at the office, his secretary was already at her desk sifting through the weekend emails. She appeared stunned to see her boss walk through the door with a tight-fitting cycling top stretched over his considerable belly and padded shorts that showed off the size of his backside.

‘Change of regime,’ he boomed. ‘Out goes fat Matt. In comes fit Matt.’

He walked into his office, closed the door and stripped off. Then he covered himself with a towel and walked back through the outer office to the shower.

‘Don’t worry,’ he shouted. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

His secretary turned to the girl with whom she shared a desk, who was giggling.

‘My God,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they did personality transplants.’

Standing beneath a hot shower, Matthew offered up a small though atheistic prayer of thanks to the understanding Professor Sturrock. He felt they’d really hit it off, perhaps because of the similarity of their professions. After all, wasn’t a lawyer’s task to understand human beings and make sense of what they said and did? His assessment of psychiatry, based on his admittedly limited knowledge, was that its goals were much the same. Professor Sturrock had quickly got to the point, and then come up with a rather clever strategy. That’s what lawyers did. As for the idea of taking up cycling, it was hardly high-level psychiatric medicine, but it was a perfect fit for Matthew. He’d hit the dreaded one hundred kilograms last summer. Plus, he’d been growing a little concerned that he needed to do more on the environmental front, and cycling instead of driving to work could count as doing his bit. What’s more, it seemed to have mended his marriage at miraculous speed. As he soaped the sweat from his skin, he was smiling at the contented Sunday he and Celia had spent together – a late breakfast with the papers, a walk to the Orange Tree pub where they had lunch sitting by the pond, then out for tea with their friends Trevor and Helene, all in the most harmonious manner.

So he was feeling what his old pupil master used to call ‘chipper with golden knobs on’ as he went back to his office to put on his suit. What he hadn’t banked on, however, was a chance encounter with Angela to disturb the new post-Sturrock equilibrium. He was striding to his first case conference of the day, in Meeting Room C, when he met her in the corridor.

‘Angela?’ said Matthew, trying hard not to look or sound fazed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Been seeing Andrew. Got a case together.’

‘Right, I see. And, er, how are you?’

‘I’m fine. You?’

He didn’t know what to say. Should he tell her about his new life of fidelity and fitness, or would that seem boastful, or possibly callous
– as if their relationship meant nothing to him? Perhaps it would be better to say he missed her. And when he thought about it, he did rather.

‘Miss you,’ he whispered, memories of their time together flooding back.

‘Miss you too,’ she said, and she winked as she said it, which had him remembering the mind-churning impact she’d had on him when he first saw her. The eyes. The smile. The hair. The hint of cleavage peering out from her white blouse. The body that looked so prim when clothed, as now, in her smart, sober barrister clothes but which he had seen naked and wild so often. He wondered if he could imagine feeling the same way about her again. And he could. He had no doubt about that. Even now, despite his assumption that one or two curious eyes would be staring into his back from the glass-fronted offices and conference rooms behind him, he felt himself shifting his body a little closer to hers.

‘It’d be nice to see you again,’ he said.

‘Do you think that would be sensible?’ said Angela.

‘Probably not, but it’d be nice.’

‘Well, you know my number,’ she said, and walked off towards the exit.

He stood in the corridor and watched her go. He said to himself that if she turned round, he would call her later today to fix a date. If she didn’t, he would take that as an instruction to leave her alone. It was tantalising. It reminded him of the excitement she had brought into his life. As she went off down the long corridor, her hips swaying just a little, he kept his eyes fixed on her backside and recalled the time he screwed her from behind in the shower at her flat. ‘Turn round,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Turn round.’ But she walked on oblivious, pushed open the door and disappeared.

‘Probably for the best,’ he said to himself and strode on to Meeting Room C. He doubted that riding a bike round country roads would give him quite the same pleasure as screwing Angela from behind in her shower. He would give it a try though. He liked the old Professor. And he owed it to Celia.

30

‘You all right?’

David was stunned to see her. He hadn’t expected Amanda to be at the entrance to the warehouse. He’d been hoping to get through his shift without bumping into her.

‘I’m OK,’ he mumbled.

‘New rules,’ she said, handing him a leaflet with a picture of a mobile phone on the front, and a big red cross superimposed on it. ‘We’ve got to leave our phones in our lockers. They think we’re all chatting instead of working.’

‘OK,’ said David, and hurried off to the locker room. When he got there he sat for a while on one of the low, hard benches. He was surprised that bumping into Amanda had not disturbed him more. He felt fine. Tired but fine.

He felt in his pocket for the folded pieces of paper which held his essay on humility. He was tempted to read it again, to give his spirits a further boost. He’d been surprised by how much he enjoyed writing it. He’d never been any good at essays in school and when Professor Sturrock first introduced regular homework, it had taken him several weeks before he felt he was expressing himself properly. But when he’d starting trying to write this, in the churchyard, the words had just poured out. He had spent all of Sunday afternoon working on it, and then much of the night revising it. He could imagine Professor Sturrock reading the essay, and being impressed, and that thought pleased him.

At 1 a.m. that morning he had saved the document one final time, under the name ‘Humility’, and then prepared to send it. He stared
at
his computer for a while. He felt he should also add an email explaining how he came to write it.

Professor, you remember you said you wanted me to write about humility. Well, I have, and here it is. I hope it is what you had in mind. I hope it is not too long, but it is what I really think. I was in the cemetery at Mum’s church yesterday, doing the headstone exercise. I can’t email it because it is a drawing. I will bring it on Friday.

I felt very low after our last session, but I guess you knew that. I felt I was falling even lower than before, and I was worried I was going to do something silly. Mother was really irritating me when I got home, even though she was doing nothing wrong. I know I will never harm her, like I won’t harm myself, I hope. You think that too, don’t you, I can tell. I hope you’re right. I think you are. But I was down at the bottom of the curve, and I always get nervous then. Experience tells you the rhythm will kick in and move upwards but there can always be a first time, can’t there, when you stay down? That’s what was making me anxious, I think. Also, I could not for the life of me work out why you wanted me to think about my own gravestone. But I tried to keep faith in you, and do what you would have wanted me to do. And it worked. I felt better. And doing it got me thinking about humility, and it made me want to write something about it for you.

You know that phrase you liked so much? Well, the storm has passed and not a blade of grass has moved.

Thank you for that and see you on Friday.

David

Afterwards he’d enjoyed a deep and seemingly dreamless sleep until the alarm went just after six to wake him for his shift at the warehouse. Now, sitting in the locker room, he felt better than he had for some time. He knew it wouldn’t last, that sooner or later there would
be
a curve back down, but at least he had the feeling that he was much better these days at dealing with his depression. It didn’t scare him like it used to. And he had seen in his mother’s eyes, as he had said goodbye to her this morning, the happiness and relief she felt in sensing that he was starting the week calm and reasonably content.

31

Sturrock was on autopilot, and his patient knew it.

‘Are you OK, sir? You seem really tired and distracted.’

‘I am. Sorry, you’re not meant to notice.’

‘Training, sir.’

‘Yes indeed.’ He had lost count of how many times he had asked former Lance Corporal Spiers not to call him ‘sir’. Spiers was a war veteran who had served in Northern Ireland and fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He had lost a leg in a roadside bombing near Basra, and been invalided out of the forces. He suffered chronic depression and had constant flashbacks not just to the attack that lost him a limb, but previous incidents which prior to the bombing had not really worried him. Sturrock had been seeing him for four months and they’d been making progress. But today, he was finding it impossible to concentrate.

‘What’s wrong, sir? If I may ask …’ Spiers said, laughing at the way their roles were reversing.

‘It’s a long story,’ said Sturrock. ‘I was forced to play host to an unexpected overnight guest.’

In fact, he felt a failure as a host. On waking up this morning, he’d tiptoed into the study to check on his visitor. Ralph was still fast asleep, and looked quite peaceful. Sturrock sat briefly on his swivel chair, staring at his house guest. He didn’t know what to do with him. Wake him? But then what? He’d have to talk to him, and what was he going to say? He decided it was a conversation he didn’t want to have, and took the coward’s way out, leaving a note on the kitchen table. ‘
Ralph, I left early for the hospital. I hope you slept well.
Help
yourself to the fridge. I’ll call you later and we can talk about the kind of clinic you might be able to go to. In the meantime, stay put. Martin
.’ Then he’d slipped quietly away, closing the front door as gently as he could.

As he headed to the tube, he felt himself walking more slowly than usual. He stopped at the cafe in the station parade and ordered a double espresso and two Danish pastries. He hoped the coffee would lift him. It didn’t. All around him he could see pictures of Ralph Hall on the front pages of newspapers, and headlines recording his patient’s demise. It felt as if there was nowhere he could escape his responsibilities. But it was Aunt Jessica who was really hanging over him.

The stop for coffee had made him late, which meant he couldn’t call Stella, or prepare for his morning’s consultations. He’d counted on having some time in the morning to think about the patients he was seeing, particularly Hafsatu. He had imagined going down the corridor to Judith Carrington’s office and asking her permission to refer Hafsatu to her. He liked Judith. Perhaps he would have sat down and had a cup of coffee with her. Perhaps she would have asked him how he was.

‘Have you tried Red Bull, sir?’ asked Spiers, leaning forward to get his attention.

Sturrock was jolted out of his reverie. ‘No, I haven’t.’

‘Wait there, sir.’

Spiers levered himself up from the chair with the help of his stick, went to the door, opened it and asked Phyllis to join them.

‘Would it be possible to get the Professor a couple of cans of Red Bull?’ he asked, in his politest voice. ‘He needs it.’ He turned to Sturrock. ‘You get an immediate massive caffeine hit and it will just keep the exhaustion at bay till you get to your bed later. I promise you, sir.’

Sturrock nodded at a bemused-looking Phyllis, who was not used to being summoned from her desk by patients. She needed his assurance that this was appropriate behaviour.

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Take it out of the lunch money and I’ll have it instead of coffee.’

The Red Bull arrived between his 10.15 appointment (a young student who was a recovering drug addict) and his 11.15 (a borderline personality disorder). He had barely been able to keep his eyes open as the student went through her diary of positive and negative feelings, though he was able to note she had been in a far better frame of mind than for some time.

‘On Wednesday, you have an entry for every one of the twenty-four hours,’ he said. ‘Did you not sleep at all?’ He was hoping she would say that no, she hadn’t slept. She was looking perky today and it might make him feel he too could survive the near sleepless night he had just endured.

‘I had a great night,’ she said. ‘What I did was think about my dreams in the morning and kind of guess what my feelings might have been in them.’

‘I see. Well, you seem happier than you were.’

‘I enjoyed doing this. It made me think more positively than I have been. I was actively looking to feel positive things, which was a bit of a first.’

‘Good. Well, let’s do the same homework next week. Just keep going with it.’

Though cheered by her improvement, he used it to end the session early so that he could try the war veteran’s Red Bull medicine.

It definitely worked. He had been so exhausted that the backs of his eyes were beginning to get pins and needles, but shortly after he took a large gulp, he felt a surge of energy. The effect lasted and halfway through the hour with his borderline personality disorder, he began to feel able to engage with his patient in a way he had so far rather failed to do.

Stella had called Phyllis twice in the course of the morning. He had felt so tired, and so beaten down in his own mind, that he had not been able to bring himself to return the calls. As the Red Bull kicked in, he could face it, just about. He called her as his borderline personality disorder left the room.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

‘OK, considering.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Still at Jack’s.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yesterday was intolerable,’ she said.

‘What in particular?’

‘That man, in my house.’

‘Stella, try to have a little compassion. He has a serious drink problem.’

‘His fault.’

‘He has lost his job and his wife.’

‘His fault.’