44 Scotland Street (25 page)

“Not even if they deserve it?” asked Bertie.

“Not even then,” replied Dr Fairbairn. He was about to continue, when he stopped, and appeared to think of something.

When he had been bitten by Wee Fraser, he had in fact smacked him sharply on the hand. Nobody had seen it and of course it was not mentioned in the case report. But he had done it, and now he felt guilt, like a great burden upon his back.
The Rucksack
of Guilt
, he thought.

63. Irene Converses with Dr Hugo Fairbairn

“There’s something troubling you,” said Irene when she saw the pained expression cross Dr Fairbairn’s face. “You looked almost tormented just then.”

Dr Fairbairn turned away from Bertie to face Irene.

“You’re very observant,” he said. “And indeed you’re right. I felt a great pang of regret. It’s passed now, but yes, it was very strong.”

“The emotions always register so clearly,” said Irene. “Our bodies are not very good at concealing things. The body is far too truthful.”

Dr Fairbairn smiled. “Absolutely. That’s the great insight which Wilhelm Reich shared with us, isn’t it? Reich was a bit odd in some of his views, I’m afraid, but he was right about character armour. Are you familiar with what he says about that?”

Irene nodded. “The idea we create a carapace of posture and gesture to protect the real us. Like Japanese Noh actors and their masks.”

“Precisely,” said Dr Fairbairn.

For a short while nothing was said. During the exchange between his mother and Dr Fairbairn, Bertie had been watching the adults, but now he turned away and looked out of the window, up at the sky, which was deep and empty. A tiny vapour trail cut across the blue, drawn by an almost invisible plane. How cold it must be up there in that jet, thought Bertie, but they would have jerseys and gloves and would be kept warm that way. Planes were good, but not as good as trains. He had travelled on a plane the previous year, to Portugal for their holidays, and he still cherished the memory of looking out of the window and seeing the ground fall away below him. He had seen roads, and cars, as small as toys, and a train on a railway line …

“You looked anguished,” said Irene. “It must have been a very painful memory.”

“Not for me,” said Dr Fairbairn quickly. “Well, the smack was painful for him, I suppose.”

“For whom?”

Dr Fairbairn shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

Irene laughed. “But surely that’s exactly what you get other people to do – you get them to talk about things.”

Dr Fairbairn spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I have talked about it in the past,” he said. “I certainly told my own analyst.”

“And did that not draw the pain?” asked Irene gently.

“For a short time,” said Dr Fairbairn. “But then the pain returned. Pain comes back, doesn’t it? We think that we have it under control, and then it comes back to us.”

“I understand what you mean,” said Irene. “Something happened to me a long time ago which is still painful. I feel an actual physical pain when I think of it, even today. It’s like a constriction of the chest.”

“We can lay these ghosts to rest if we go about it in the right way,” said Dr Fairbairn. “The important thing is to understand the thing itself. To see it for what it really is.”

“Which is just what Auden says in that wonderful poem of his,” said Irene. “You know the one? The one he wrote in memory of Freud shortly after Freud’s death in London.
Able to approach the future as a friend, without a wardrobe of excuses
– what a marvellous insight.”

“I know the poem,” said Dr Fairbairn.

“And so do I,” interjected Bertie.

Dr Fairbairn, whose back had been turned to Bertie, now swung round and looked at him with interest.

“Do you read Auden, Bertie?”

Irene answered for him. “Yes, he does. I started him off

when he was four. He responded very well to Auden. It’s the respect for metre that makes him so accessible to young people.”

Dr Fairbairn looked doubtful, but if he had been going to contest Irene’s assertion he appeared to think better of it.

“Of course, Auden had some very strange ideas,” he mused. “Apropos of our conversation of a few moments ago – about psychosomatic illness – Auden went quite far in his views on that. He believed that some illnesses were punishments, and that very particular parts of the body would go wrong if one did the wrong thing. So when he heard that Freud had cancer of the jaw, he said:
He must have been a liar.
Isn’t that bizarre?”

“Utterly,” said Irene. “But then people believe all sorts of things, don’t they? The Emperor Justinian, for example, believed that homosexuality caused earthquakes. Can you credit that?”

Dr Fairbairn then made an extremely witty remark (an Emperor Justinian joke of the sort which was very popular in Byzantium not all that long ago) and Irene laughed. “Frightfully funny,” she said.

Dr Fairbairn inclined his head modestly. “I believe that a modicum of wit helps the spirits. Humour is cathartic, don’t you find?”

“I know a good joke,” interjected Bertie.

“Later,” said Dr Fairbairn.

Irene now resumed her conversation with the analyst. “I’ve often thought of undergoing a training in analysis,” she said. “I’m very interested in Melanie Klein.”

Dr Fairbairn nodded encouragingly. “You shouldn’t rule it out,” he said. “There’s a crying need for psychoanalysts in this city. And virtually nobody knows anything about Klein.” He paused for a moment. “It’s a totally arbitrary matter – the supply of analysts. There’s Buenos Aires, for example, where there is an abundance – a positive abundance – and here in Scotland we are so few.”

Irene looked thoughtful. “It must be very hard for analysts in Argentina, with their economic crisis and everything. I gather that some analysts have seen their savings wiped out entirely.”

“Yes,” said Dr Fairbairn. “It’s been tough for analysts there. Firstly the generals, Videla and that bunch. They banned the teaching of psychoanalysis, you know. For years people had to be discreet. Freud unsettles people like generals. Military types don’t like him.”

“Not surprising,” said Irene. “People in uniform don’t like to be reminded of the fact that we’re all vulnerable underneath. Uniforms are a protection for fragile egos.

“I would never, ever, send Bertie to a school that required a uniform,” said Irene firmly. “There are no uniforms at the Steiner School.”

They both looked at Bertie, who looked back at them.

“But I want a uniform,” he said. “Other boys have uniforms. Why can’t I have a uniform too?”

The question was addressed to Irene, who said nothing in reply. She would normally have refused a request for a uniform out of hand, but now she looked to Dr Fairbairn for a lead.

The analyst smiled at Bertie. “Why would you want a uniform, Bertie? Would it make you feel different?”

“No,” said Bertie. “It would make me feel the same, which is what I want.”

64. Post-analysis Analysis

Bertie’s hour with Dr Fairbairn passed extremely quickly – or so it seemed to Irene. She was very impressed with the psychotherapist, who quite lived up to her expectations of what the author of
Shattered to Pieces
would be like. They had discovered that they had a great deal in common: an appreciation of Stockhausen (not a taste shared by everyone; indeed, Irene had admitted that one had to work at Stockhausen), an enthusiasm for Auden, and a thorough knowledge of the works of Melanie Klein. All of this had taken some time to establish, of course, and this had left little time for Dr Fairbairn to say anything to Bertie, after their brief – and somewhat disturbing – exchange over Bertie’s fears that Dr Fairbairn would smack him.

That had been a potentially embarrassing moment and Irene had been concerned that the psychoanalyst might conclude that Bertie was used to being smacked by his parents. That, of course, would have been a terrible misunderstanding. Irene and Stuart had never once raised their hands to Bertie, not even when, shortly after the incident in the Floatarium, he had deliberately set fire to Stuart’s copy of
The Guardian
while he was reading it in his chair. That had been a dreadful moment, but they had kept very cool about it, which was undoubtedly the right thing to do. Rather than let Bertie think that they were upset by this, they had pretended to be completely unconcerned.

“Daddy doesn’t care,” Irene had said insouciantly. “It makes no difference to him.”

Bertie had looked at his father, as if for confirmation.

“No,” said Stuart. “I don’t need to read the newspaper. I know what it would have said anyway.”

Irene had been momentarily concerned about this, but had let the remark pass. She hoped, though, that Bertie would not interpret it as suggesting that
The Guardian
was predictable. That would never do. And he should certainly not develop ideas like that before he went to the Steiner School, where
The Guardian
was read out each day at school assembly.

Now, before going back to Scotland Street with Bertie, she decided that they would make the short detour to Valvona and Crolla, to stock up on porcini mushrooms. Bertie liked this shop, with its rich smells and its intriguing shelves, and she would be able to talk to him over a latte in the café. And it was always possible that one might meet somebody interesting in the café, and have a conversation about something important. She had recently met a well-known food-writer there and she had learned a great deal about olive oil – things she had never known before. Edinburgh was full of interesting people, Irene thought, provided one knew where to go to meet them. Valvona and Crolla was a good start, because interesting people liked to eat interesting food. Then there was Ottakars Bookshop in George Street, and Glass and Thompson in Dundas Street, where interesting people went for a latte.

She found herself thinking about Dr Fairbairn, who was unquestionably interesting. She had never seen him in Valvona and Crolla, which was surprising, but perhaps he bought his olive oil in a delicatessen in Bruntsfield – that was always possible – or even in a supermarket, although that was unlikely. One would not expect to turn a corner in one of those ghastly supermarkets and see the author of
Shattered to Pieces
peering into the refrigerated fish section.

Where did Dr Fairbairn live, she wondered? This was a crucial, and very difficult question. The best place for a person like him to live was the New Town, although the better part of Sciennes was certainly a suitable place for psychoanalysts. He could not live in Morningside (too bourgeois) nor the Grange (too hautbourgeois). This left very few locales in which Dr Fairbairn could be imagined, unless, of course, he lived in Portobello. That, Irene had to concede, was just possible. The most surprising people lived in Portobello, including at least some creative people.

And was Dr Fairbairn married, with children perhaps? This was even more difficult to determine than the question of where he might live. She had glanced at his left hand and had seen no ring, but that meant nothing these days. There were even some people who put rings on the relevant finger in order to flout convention or to throw others off the scent, whatever the scent was. And Dr Fairbairn might not be married at all but might have a partner, and children by that partner. Or he might not be interested at all.

That, of course, was the most difficult issue to determine. Irene knew that there were people who were just not interested at all, just as there were people who were not in the slightest bit interested in tennis. This did not mean that they were resentful of people who played tennis, or of people who liked to watch tennis; it’s just that tennis
meant nothing to them
.

They made their way slowly towards Valvona and Crolla. Bertie was still cautiously avoiding stepping on the lines in the pavement, frowning with concentration on the task, but this was unnoticed by Irene, who was still lost in speculation over the private life of Dr Fairbairn. There was something about him which suggested that he did not have a wife or partner. It was difficult to put one’s finger on this, but it was a rather lost look, a look of being uncared for. One sometimes saw this in men who had no women to look after them. Gay men were different, Irene thought. They looked after themselves very well, but straight men tended to look dishevelled and slightly neglected if they had nobody.