Espresso Tales (26 page)

71. Crushed Strawberry

Trudging up Dundas Street with his mother, deep in thought, Bertie reflected on the dire course of events over the past few days. He had enjoyed Tofu's party immensely–and had decided that when he turned eighteen, and became free of his mother, he would go to as many parties as possible. He understood that when one was a student one did not even need to be invited to parties–one just went anyway. That prospect appealed to him greatly, as he doubted whether he would get many invitations. Indeed, the invitation to Tofu's party had been the only invitation he had ever received.

But if the party had been a conspicuous success, the same could not be said of its immediate aftermath. When Irene had picked him up in the car, Bertie had been worried that she would immediately notice the fact that he was wearing the pair of jeans which he had obtained from Tofu in exchange for his crushed-strawberry dungarees and a hot-dog. The jeans fitted him perfectly and they were just right in every respect. There were faded patches at the knees and the hems at the bottom of the leg were ragged. There were several pockets on each side, which were undoubtedly useful, although Bertie had nothing to put in them. He had always wanted a penknife, and had been consistently refused one by Irene; if he were ever to get one, then there was a place for that in the right pocket.

“What do you want a penknife for?” Irene had asked when Bertie had raised the subject some months earlier.

“They're useful for cutting things,” said Bertie. “They have lots of blades, Mummy, and some of them have those things for taking stones out of horses' hooves.”

“Don't be so ridiculous, Bertie,” said Irene. “You've never even been near a horse, and you don't need to cut anything. If you do, then just ask Mummy to cut it for you with her nice scissors.”

Bertie had said nothing more, knowing that there was no possibility of getting Irene to change her mind once she had made a ruling. She just did not understand, he concluded, and he thought she never would. Boys need to do certain things–to have penknives, and secret clubs, and bikes–but Irene would never accept this. That was because she had no idea of what it was like to be a boy. Irene thought that boys and girls were the same, or could be made to be the same. But that was wrong. If you were a boy, you just felt differently. It was as simple as that. For his part, Bertie was prepared to accept that girls felt differently about many things. He understood, for example, what it was like to be Olive. He understood why Olive hated Tofu, and why Tofu hated Olive. He understood why Olive hated to have her pigtails pulled by boys and why she thought that Hiawatha's socks smelled. Bertie could empathise with all this. Why, then, could his mother not see things from his point of view?

For a few moments after getting into the car after the party, Bertie had held his breath. But his mother, for come reason, did not seem to notice the jeans he was wearing and made no mention of them. When they arrived home, though, as they were walking up the stair at 44 Scotland Street, Irene suddenly let out a cry.

“Bertie!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you wearing?”

Bertie's heart gave a lurch. “Jeans, Mummy,” he said. “Do you like them?”

“Jeans!” shouted Irene. “Where are your dungarees? What have you done with your dungarees?”

Bertie swallowed hard. He had wondered whether he could tell her that they had been stolen and that he had been given the jeans by a kind passer-by, but he was a truthful boy and did not like the idea of lying, even to his mother. So he had decided that he would tell her exactly what happened and throw himself on her mercy. After all, she could hardly get the dungarees back now that property in them had legally passed to Tofu.

“I exchanged them with Tofu,” he said. “He liked my dungarees and so I gave them to him in exchange for his jeans. I'm sure that the jeans cost more than the dungarees did. So it was a pretty good bargain.”

Irene shook her finger at him. “You naughty, naughty boy, Bertie! Mummy is very, very displeased. Those were your best dungarees and you have no business letting some horrible rough boy, this Toffee person…”

“Tofu,” corrected Bertie.

“This Tofu person take them off you,” concluded Irene.

“I'm sorry, Mummy,” said Bertie, looking down at the stairs below his feet. “I won't do it again. I promise.”

“You certainly will not!” said Irene, as they resumed their climb up the stairs. “And the first thing we'll do is telephone them when we get in and arrange to go round and collect your dungarees.”

“But we can't do that,” wailed Bertie. “Everybody knows you can't take things back. That's the law, Mummy. You can't take things back once you've given them away.”

“Nonsense,” snapped Irene. “Those dungarees cost a great deal of money and they still belong to you. Toffee had no business getting round you like that.”

Bertie hardly dared imagine the scene that was being prepared. It would be the ultimate humiliation to be dragged round to Tofu's house, to have to surrender his newly-acquired jeans, and to have to don, once more, his crushed-strawberry dungarees.

“Do I have to go?” he asked, his voice small and discouraged. “Can't we ask them just to drop them round?”

“No,” said Irene, firmly. “We have to face up to the consequences of our acts, Bertie. You have created this situation and now you are going to have to get out of it again–like a man.”

Bertie looked up at his mother. He wanted to act like a man–oh, how he wanted to act like a man. But men did not have to wear crushed-strawberry dungarees. Men did not have to go to yoga and psychotherapy. Men did not have mothers like Irene. And in the result, it was every bit as humiliating as he had feared. His mother referred to Tofu as Toffee throughout the encounter, and she even shook a finger at him. Bertie wanted to die. He wanted to close his eyes and go to sleep and never have to open them and see crushed-strawberry dungarees again.

72. Ink and the Imagination

Dr Fairbairn sat at his desk, a small bottle of ink in his hands. “Now, Bertie,” he said. “I thought that today we would do something different. This is a bottle of ink.”

He held up the small black bottle and shook it in front of Bertie. Bertie, wide-eyed, stared at Dr Fairbairn. It must only be a matter of days, thought Bertie, before Dr Fairbairn was taken to Carstairs, and he wondered how they would do it. Perhaps they could have men with a net drive into Edinburgh and they could throw the net over Dr Fairbairn while he was walking down Dundas Street in that blue jacket of his. Then they could bundle him into a van and take him off. Bertie had located Carstairs on a map and had seen that it was not far away. It would not take them long to get him there, and they would probably arrive in time for tea, which would be nice.

Bertie swallowed. “Ink,” he said quietly. It was best not to say anything that would cause Dr Fairbairn to become more excited. Short words, uttered very softly, were probably safest.

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Good boy. Black ink.”

Bertie nodded. “Ink,” he said again. And then added: “Ink.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “You may be wondering, Bertie, why I'm holding a bottle of ink.”

Bertie shook his head. “No,” he said, even more quietly.

“Well,” said Dr Fairbairn. “There's a very interesting little game we therapists have invented. It's called the Rorschach Inkblot Test. Would you like to play it, Bertie?”

Bertie felt he had no alternative but to agree, and he did. This must have been the right answer, as Dr Fairbairn appeared pleased with it.

“Very well,” said the psychotherapist. “I shall open this little bottle of ink…so. There we are. And now I shall pour just a little bit of it onto the middle of this piece of paper. So! Look. Now I shall fold the paper over, in half, like that. There!”

Bertie stared at the piece of folded paper. “Is it my turn?” he asked.

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Hah! No, there are no turns in this game. You, Bertie, have to look at the ink blot that comes out and tell me what you see! That's what you do.”

Bertie took the piece of paper and unfolded it with trembling hands. Then he examined the still wet ink blot.

“I see Scotland,” he said quietly. “Look, there it is.”

Dr Fairbairn took the piece of paper and stared at it. Then he turned it round.

“Funny,” he said. “I'll do it again.”

Once more he poured a small amount of ink onto the paper and folded it over. Again, he handed it to Bertie. “Now, we shall see,” he said. “You tell me what you see. And don't hesitate to tell me, even if it's something very strange. Don't hesitate to speak your mind.”

“I won't,” said Bertie obligingly.

He took the piece of paper and unfolded it.

“I see the Queen,” said Bertie. “Look, there she is, Dr Fairbairn. I see the Queen's head.”

Dr Fairbairn took the paper from him and peered at it. He seemed put-out.

“I shall do it again,” he said.

More ink was spilled, and the paper was folded. Bertie, now quite confident, although he found this game somewhat tedious, exposed the blot to view.

This time he stared at the blot for some time before he spoke. Then, handing the paper back to Dr Fairbairn, he said: “That's Dr Freud, isn't it? Look, Dr Fairbairn, you've made two Dr Freuds!”

Rather to Bertie's surprise, Dr Fairbairn now put away his bottle of ink and threw the pieces of paper in the wastepaper bin. “Perhaps we shall do that again, Bertie,” he said, “when you are feeling a bit more imaginative. For the moment I think we can leave it at that. I need to have a quick chat with your Mummy before you go. You go off and read
Scottish Field
in the waiting room. Good boy.”

Bertie sat in the waiting room while his mother went in to speak to Dr Fairbairn. Although he knew that he was meant to have an hour of therapy, he never really had more than ten minutes, as his mother would go in and talk to Dr Fairbairn for at least fifty minutes before she came out. What could they be talking about? he wondered. Surely one could not go on about Melanie Klein for fifty minutes twice a week? But that's what they seemed to be doing.

Inside the consulting room, Irene sat in the chair recently vacated by Bertie and listened to Dr Fairbairn.

“I did a bit of Rorschach work with him this morning,” Dr Fairbairn said. “We didn't get very good results. He came up with very literal interpretations. I saw nothing of the subconscious processes. No light on the object relations issue.”

“Oh well,” said Irene. “We must persist. There's still a lot of aggression there, I'm afraid. He wanted to go bowling the other day. That's very aggressive.”

“Maybe,” said Dr Fairbairn, noting something down on a pad. “Maybe not.”

“And then there's some sign of knife fantasies,” went on Irene. “He keeps asking for a penknife.”

“Worrying, that,” said Dr Fairbairn. “Of course, boys do like that sort of thing, you know.”

Irene looked at him. “Some boys may,” she said. “Some males need knives. Some don't.”

Dr Fairbairn thought for a while. “You know,” he said, “I've been thinking a bit about Bertie, and I'm beginning to have a sense of what's going on. The dynamics. The splitting process. The good mother/bad mother schizoid bifurcation.”

Irene leant forward eagerly. “Oh yes?” she said. “And what do you think is the problem?”

Dr Fairbairn rose to his feet. He looked down at the crumpled pieces of paper in his wastepaper basket and, on a sudden impulse, picked one out, uncrumpled it and showed it to Irene.

“What do you see there?” he asked.

Irene took the inkblot of Scotland and frowned. “A cloud of guilt?” she suggested. “Yes, a cloud of guilt.”

“Hah!” exclaimed Dr Fairbairn. “That is Scotland!”

“Nonsense!” cried Irene. “That's a cloud of guilt.”

Dr Fairbairn bent down and retrieved the inkblot of the Queen. “And this?” he asked, thrusting it into Irene's hands. “What's this?”

“Mother,” said Irene, without hesitation.

Dr Fairbairn snatched the paper back from her. Then he turned to face her and spoke very quietly but firmly.

“You know something?” he said. “You know something? I've decided what the problem is. It's
you!
”

73. Wee Fraser Again

Bertie knew that something was wrong the moment that he heard shouting issuing from Dr Fairbairn's consulting room. He had been engrossed in a copy of
Scottish Field
and the time had passed rather quickly. But now the normal sedate silence of the waiting room was disturbed by voices raised in discord. Dr Fairbairn and his mother were having a row! Indeed, it might be even worse. Perhaps Dr Fairbairn had finally got out of control and might even now be assaulting his mother, possibly even throwing ink at her! Bertie dropped the magazine and sprang to his feet. He was not sure what to do; if he burst into the consulting room, then that might just make matters worse; if he stayed where he was then his mother could meet some terrible fate at the hands of the psychotherapist, all the while unaided by her son.

Bertie moved over and put an ear to the door of the consulting room. The sound of shouting had dropped, and now there seemed to be silence within the room. That was a very bad sign, he thought. Perhaps Dr Fairbairn was even now lowering his mother's body from the window, on a rope, with a view to hiding it in the Queen Street Gardens. But then, there was a voice, and another–voices which were no longer raised and seemed to be making casual conversation. Bertie heaved a sigh of relief. The row was over. They had got back to talking about Melanie Klein.

Inside the consulting room, Dr Fairbairn sat at his desk, his head in his hands.

“I don't know what came over me,” he said remorsefully. “It was all so sudden. I don't know why I said it.”

Irene looked at him. She understood how stress could affect people. Dr Fairbairn's job was undoubtedly stressful, dealing with all sorts of harrowing personal problems. It would be easy in such circumstances to say something rash and, as in this case, completely unjustified.

“I understand,” she said gently. “I really do. You mustn't reproach yourself unduly.”

She looked at him as he continued to stare down at the surface of his desk. Of course this might be an opportunity to probe a bit; there was a great deal she would like to know about Dr Fairbairn and now might be the time to do that probing.

“Of course, it might be better if you talked to me about it,” she said.

Dr Fairbairn looked up. “About what?” he asked.

“About all the things that you're so obviously repressing,” Irene said quietly. “About the guilt.”

Dr Fairbairn was silent for a few moments. “Is my guilt that obvious?” he asked.

“I'm afraid so,” said Irene, trying to sound as sympathetic as she could. “It's written very clearly. I've always sensed it.”

“Oh,” said Dr Fairbairn. It was like being told that one's deodorant was less than effective. It was very deflating.

“Guilt has such a characteristic signature,” went on Irene. “I find that I can always tell.”

She watched Dr Fairbairn from the corner of her eye. She was not sure what his guilt was based on, but it was bound to be something interesting.

“You can tell me, you know,” she urged. “You'd feel much relieved.”

“Do you think so?” asked Dr Fairbairn.

Irene nodded. It was a time for non-verbal signs.

“I feel so awful,” said Dr Fairbairn. “I've been carrying this burden of guilt for so long. And I've tried to convince myself that it's not there, but my denial has only made things worse.”

“Denial always does,” said Irene. “Denial is a sticking tape with very little sticking power.” She paused and reflected on the adage that she had just coined. It was really rather apt, she thought.

“And yet it's so difficult to confront one's sense of shame,” said Dr Fairbairn. “That's not easy.”

Irene was beginning to feel impatient. She glanced at her watch. What if the next patient arrived now? She might be prevented from hearing Dr Fairbairn's revelations, and by the time that they next met he might be more composed and less inclined to confess his guilt. “So?” she said. “What lies at the heart of your guilt?” She paused. “What did you actually do?”

Dr Fairbairn looked away from her, as if embarrassed by what he was about to say.

“I suppose at the heart of my guilt lies my professional failure,” he said. “I've tried to tell myself that it was no failure, but it was. It really was.”

Irene leaned forward. “How did you fail?” she asked. “Tell me. Let me be your catharsis.”

“You've heard of my famous case?” asked Dr Fairbairn. “The study of Wee Fraser?”

“Of course I have,” said Irene. “It's almost as famous as Freud's case of Little Hans or Melanie Klein's Richard.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled, a smile that surrendered shortly to pain. “I'm flattered, of course,” he said, “but in a curious way that makes what I did even worse.”

Irene looked at him in astonishment. Had he falsified the case? Did Wee Fraser actually exist, or was he a fraudulent creation upon which Dr Fairbairn's entire scientific reputation had been built? If the latter were the case, then it would amount to a major scandal. It was easy to understand why the author of such an act of deception would feel a crushing burden of guilt.

“What exactly did you do?” Irene asked. “Did you invent Wee Fraser?”

Dr Fairbairn looked at her blankly. “Invent him? Why on earth would I have invented him?” He paused. “No. I didn't invent him. I hit him.”

Irene gasped. “You hit Wee Fraser? Actually hit him?”

Dr Fairbairn closed his eyes. “I hit him,” he said. “He bit me and I hit him. And do you know what? You know what? After I hit him, I actually felt a lot better.” He looked out of the window, shaking his head. “And then the guilt came,” he said. Then the guilt came, like a thief in the night.

And took from me my peace of mind.