All in the Mind (11 page)

‘What do you think?’ Professor Sturrock asked. ‘Do
you
think you’re a sex addict?’

‘Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it?’ Matthew said. ‘I mean, I had one affair, and the minute it was over, I had another, and all the time I have this OK marriage at home. So it is quite odd really, and I can see where Celia’s coming from.’

Professor Sturrock asked to be taken through the exact sequence of events as the affairs unfolded, and Matthew did his best to indicate to Celia that he would prefer her not to interrupt quite so often.

Then Professor Sturrock asked him in rapid succession about his sexual history, masturbation, pornography, the frequency of marital sex, the frequency of urges to stray. Matthew tried to be as honest as he could without the whole thing becoming too embarrassing, and he was encouraged by the gentle nodding of Professor Sturrock’s head as he made notes of his answers.

‘Finally,’ Professor Sturrock said, ‘have you ever paid for sex?’

‘No, never,’ Matthew said, taken aback by the suggestion.

Professor Sturrock turned to Celia.

‘Mrs Noble, I think I should probably talk to your husband alone for a while, but tell me, what is your assessment? I would really value that.’

Matthew sat back as Celia let out a stream of facts and figures, citing as incontrovertible proof the findings of a website run by Sex Addicts Anonymous.

‘Thank you,’ said Professor Sturrock, ‘that’s fascinating.’

When she had left and gone to wait for Matthew in the waiting room, Professor Sturrock sat in the chair she had just vacated, looked at him, and smiled, a very warm man-to-man smile that made Matthew feel more at ease than he had done at any time since he caught sight of Julian the clerk sitting at the kitchen table after his last and indeed final orgasm chez Angela.

‘What do you really think?’ Professor Sturrock asked.

Matthew took a deep breath. Sturrock seemed trustworthy enough.

‘I think you know what I think. I’m here because I was unfaithful to my wife. Neither of us wants to split up, but Celia needs to have a reason why I strayed and it has to be a reason in me, not in her, or in us. That’s what I think.’

Professor Sturrock smiled, and nodded. ‘I don’t think you’re a sex addict either. You have what seems to me a pretty average interest in, and experience of, sex and you also have a higher than usual interest in saving your marriage. I would be happy to help you.’

Help involved entering into something of a conspiracy: Matthew would come to see Professor Sturrock, no more than half a dozen times, but could tell Celia that the course of treatment was likely to last longer. Before they left today, Professor Sturrock would have a private word with Celia, explaining to her that this complaint was quite common, quite straightforward to treat, but that it was best done by a series of one-to-one sessions.

Matthew was delighted. The cost of six mock sessions with Sturrock was negligible if it meant he could placate Celia without actually having to become a real sex addict.

Professor Sturrock suggested they went through a few motions. He advised that Matthew start to intimate to Celia that he would be getting into a major exercise regime. ‘She needs to think you’re taking on board what she says, and changing. Get her involved in helping you with a big fitness drive, maybe take up cycling. It will do you good and it will make your wife feel more secure, that you are channelling your energies in a direction she knows about and approves of.’ Matthew liked Professor Sturrock’s style.

As they went out to rejoin Celia, Professor Sturrock told her, ‘I’m really grateful you came along today, but it will work best if I see him alone from now on in. You’ve done the hard work. Now leave the easy bit to me.’

‘What a lovely man,’ she said as the lift took them down to the ground floor.

‘Yes, very,’ said Matthew. ‘Older than I thought he would be.’

‘Wise,’ she said. ‘Wise, I would say.’

‘Oh yes, very sharp.’

‘What did you talk about on your own?’ she asked.

‘Nothing too much,’ he said. ‘Same as when you were there really. Bit more detail, I suppose. He did say he thought I needed to get myself a really serious exercise regime beyond golf.’

‘Oh, good idea. Do you want me to sign you up for the gym? They have really good personal trainers.’

‘No, I think I’m going to get myself a bike. He seemed to think a bike was the right thing for me.’

‘A bike?’ she said, and he read in the question mark the intimation that he was too fat for a bike. ‘What a great idea,’ she added, picking up on his reaction.

As the lift slowed to a halt and the doors opened, Celia went over to kiss him on the cheek. It was the first time she had kissed him in a while. He took her hand and squeezed it. He felt a little embarrassed, almost like he was touching her for the first time, but once it was done he felt better about the way things were going. He kissed her on the lips.

‘Thank you for coming today,’ he said. ‘I had my doubts but I’m glad you came.’ He reflected for a moment on whether he meant it, but before coming to a conclusion, he moved on to an assessment of which bike shop was nearest to their house. He had decided not to use the Internet, which was very much Celia’s domain.

‘You know something, I think with that nice psychiatrist’s help we’ll crack this,’ she said.

‘Yes, I think we will,’ said Matthew, who was now longing to get to chambers, where he had a case conference planned for 2.30.

9

Sturrock watched as Mr and Mrs Noble made their way towards the lift, then he went back into his consulting room, and gently closed the door behind him. Every limb in his body was weary. It felt like something worse than Friday tiredness. His brain was barely functioning.

He liked to make notes on his patients as soon as practicable after they left his room, to supplement those he made while they were with him, but today he was finding it difficult to remember who he had seen when. He needed his schedule to remind him. It was only four hours since Emily came in, but he struggled to remember the detail of their conversation. He scribbled down, ‘
Zero steps forward, three steps back. Not really engaging. Rejecting empathy strategy. Seems to be retreating more and more into herself
.’ Of Arta, he was even more gloomy. ‘
Tried forgiveness. Total rejection. Anger entrapping not motivating. Fear rupture
.’ Of David, he made a few scribbles on his dream register and best–worst list, then added on a separate sheet of paper, ‘
First mention of Amanda. Seemed hopeful of proper relationship. Rejected badly. Bound to be stirring feelings of past rejection. Worrisome for next few days. Maybe call Sunday
.’ About Matthew, he had little to say. ‘
Wife says sex addict. Not. Go for sport and support
.’

The only positive thing to come out of the morning was that David had confided in him, although his pleasure at this was marred by concerns that David’s rejection by Amanda would trigger one of his really deep depressions, the kind which reduced him to near speechlessness. Mostly, though, Sturrock simply felt he was looking back over a morning of failure. The appointment he felt worst about
was
Arta’s, because he knew he had made a mistake. He hated making mistakes. Was it because he was too tired? Or had he been too keen to try something different and dramatic because he wanted to see whether he could relate it to his asylum-seeker research project? If so, that was bad, he said to himself. Was he doing it for her, or for himself ? Right now, he genuinely didn’t know the answer. He was feeling shattered and the effort of trying to think it through was making him feel even more so. This was happening too often, that he beat himself up when things didn’t go exactly as he had planned for them to go. His only consolation was that his words had provoked a strong reaction in her. But where that reaction would lead was what worried him.

He called his cousin Simon to see if there was yet a confirmed date for the funeral, but the number was engaged. Please God, let it not be on Tuesday, he thought. And then felt instantly guilty. He pulled a piece of paper towards him and picked up a pencil. ‘
I will always remember my aunt for her … what?
’ he wrote. He sat there, pencil poised for a moment, but no words suggested themselves. It was as if all his memories of Aunt Jessica had vanished from his mind.

He sat back in his chair and tried to recall how she had looked when she was the happy-go-lucky holiday hostess who used to make such a fuss of him. No image came.

It was a row about religion, with his father at the heart of it, that led to his falling-out with Aunt Jessica. He forgot when it was exactly. Maybe forty-five years ago. It was the last day of what became his last holiday at her Somerset home. His father and his sister Jan had come to collect him and the two families were having Sunday lunch together before the Sturrocks set off back to Hertfordshire. It had all been perfectly jovial with his uncle getting out his best wine and Aunt Jessica chatting happily to Jan when his father started preaching to Aunt Jessica about the benefits of a church-school education, and criticising her and her husband for not sending Simon to such an institution.

‘But, Dad,’ Martin had shouted across the table, ‘you don’t
know
God exists any more than I know for sure that He doesn’t. You believe
simply
because you were brought up to believe, the same as Muslims believe in the Prophet Muhammad because that’s what they’re brought up to believe. How do you know you’re right and they’re wrong? You don’t. You just think that, because you think it, it must be right.’

Until his mid teens Sturrock had gone along with the education his father believed in, positively enjoying the religious as well as the social side to the weekly Sunday-school sessions that followed church. At one stage, he’d even gone so far as to ask his RE teacher how you became a vicar. But when he went into the senior school, he started to emerge as something of a star in all the science subjects, and medicine or possibly his father’s chosen profession, engineering, seemed more obvious careers. It was also around that time that the rather indistinct but negative feelings he had about his father began to form into something vaguely approaching rebellion, and religion came into his sights as something to rebel against. Compared with some of the tales he heard from patients, for whom a mother and father were considered the trigger for violent and destructive acts of rebellion, up to and including murder, Sturrock’s protests were small-scale. He undid his school tie as soon as he left the house. He smoked one or two cigarettes, but so hated the taste and the smell that there was never any chance of him engaging in anything stronger. He had a similar experience with alcohol. At a friend’s sixteenth birthday party he drank four pints of cider, relishing with each gulp the idea that he was doing something of which his father would thoroughly disapprove. But when he found himself being sick in his friend’s back garden, he decided that drink, like cigarettes, was probably not for him.

By far his greatest act of rebellion was his announcement at Aunt Jessica’s Sunday-lunch table that he doubted there was a God. It was the beginning of what would become his hardened atheism. Looking back, he realised that, as much as rejecting God, he was rejecting his father, and his father’s interpretation of what God meant in their lives. But it led to such a scene that he’d felt he had to hold firm, not retreat from what he’d said, so that doubts about God’s existence became a conviction that God did not exist. As he grew older, he came to doubt
his
own atheism. Stella’s faith was strong and they talked a lot about religion. But even though she often implored him to come to church with her, he always refused. He felt he had expressed his disbelief so forcefully in the past, he couldn’t now air any doubts he might have.

His father was not used to being spoken to as his son spoke to him that day in Aunt Jessica’s kitchen, and responded by launching into a full-scale defence of Christianity. He could see his aunt start to look concerned. This was the kind of conversation he could enjoy having with her, but they had both noticed the telltale red flush rising on his father’s neck, which signalled that he was about to lose his temper.

‘Now, now, let’s just finish lunch and leave this for another day,’ she’d said.

‘Yes, George,’ said his uncle. ‘Let me pour you another drink.’

‘No,’ he’d said, ‘let’s carry on. Let’s for once say what we think.’

‘Martin, I really don’t think it’s sensible to say what you think right now,’ his aunt had said, smiling ingratiatingly at her brother. ‘You’re too emotional and het up.’

‘That’s exactly why I should say what I think.’

He had heard Aunt Jessica say some very cutting things both about her brother and about the Church, but here she was simply trying to shut him up, and take her brother’s side.

She tried a different tack.

‘Jan, what do you think?’ she said, clearly hoping Martin’s younger sister might cool things down.

‘Well, even at Sunday school we’ve had a session called “Does God really Exist?”,’ said Jan diplomatically, ‘so perhaps it’s OK to ask the question.’

‘Of course He does,’ said his father. ‘Everyone knows God exists.’

‘Everyone?’ he’d said, raising an eyebrow in a way guaranteed to infuriate his father. ‘The Muslims don’t believe in your God. The atheists don’t believe in any God. If everyone knows it, why are there so many empty churches on a Sunday?’

‘That’s to do with television and cars and people having other things to do now,’ said Aunt Jessica.

‘Is it? Well, here’s another one – why is there so much starvation? Why are there wars? Why are some people rich and other people poor?’

‘But God is a guide for our world. He doesn’t run the world.’

‘I thought He created it. If He created it, maybe He should run it, and run it better?’

He knew he had incurred his father’s deep displeasure, but he felt he was crossing the Rubicon, and he might as well go the whole way now. He put a sliver of roast beef in his mouth and chewed slowly for a few moments, thinking about how to express the view that, if God was as He was described in church and Sunday school, there should be more love in their family, and less fear.