Presence of Mind (16 page)

‘Not really, no. She has no recollection of the journey to Scotland,'

‘It's a little frightening, isn't it?"

‘It is, rather.'

She hesitated but when I didn't enlarge on my agreement she smiled and withdrew.

A little later I phoned Jan Staveley to enquire after Mark's ankle. Most of the swelling had gone down and she thought he'd be back at school the next day. ‘How's Briony?' she asked.

‘So-so.' I didn't want to go into details. Certainly I had no intention of telling anyone I was taking her to see Max Forrest.

‘I presume the disappearance was just an extension of what I told you about?'

‘I imagine so. I'm trying not to worry about it. Dr. Burton's seen her again. It's probably overwork as much as anything.'

‘You'll be glad when the exams are over.'

I knew I'd implied that overwork had been the doctor's diagnosis and that Jan had accepted my remark at face value. It was just another of the half-truths with which my life suddenly seemed peppered.

As the day passed, the muscles in my stomach tightened apprehensively. Would Max be able to help us? And what form would such help take? The implications of psychiatry raised bogeys I wasn't equipped to face riddled with superstitious horror tales of mediaeval Bedlam. Please not hospitalisation, I thought frantically – not for Briony.

My anxiety and general restlessness propelled me out of the house to meet her long before the necessary time and I was forced to park the car in the full heat of the afternoon sun. Even with all the windows open I was hot and uncomfortable and the waiting time seemed interminable, yet when at last she opened the car door and slid in beside me I would willingly have waited endless hours more. Now, no delay was possible. It was time to go. I switched on the engine and pulled away from the curb.

The Suffolk countryside had never looked lovelier. It impinged on my attention beyond the pulse which fluttered at the base of my throat and the concentration I tried to keep anchored on my driving. We splashed through a ford and climbed the slope on the other side. Hens squawked agitatedly, running in an ungainly manner from the car's approach, and a few ducks hunched by the roadside in neckruffs of emerald feathers.

Bury St Edmunds, said a road sign. I had always loved Bury, with its living tapestry of history, the Norman buildings and the Inns where pilgrims had rested on their way to St Edmund's shrine. The very street names evoked the richness of its memories – Cornhill, Butter Market, Looms Lane, and, on a more ecclesiastical note, Abbey Gate and Abbot's Bridge. Today, however, it was merely the outer strands of the web which waited to entrap us.

I stopped the car outside a tall stone house in a street of tall stone houses, each with whitened steps leading to the front door and an array of brass plates shining in the sunlight ‘Well,' I said unnecessarily, ‘Here we are.'

We were shown into the waiting-room, well appointed with comfortable sofas and chairs, a coffee table laden with magazines and a window looking out down the long narrow garden. Almost immediately a pleasant, quiet-voiced woman came to collect us.

‘Mrs Tenby? Will you both come this way, please?'

Max Forrest was at the door of his room to meet us. In his clerical grey suit and snowy shirt he looked entirely different from the informal little man whose hirsute body had so disgusted Cynthia. Numbly I sat where he indicated, Briony on my left, and Max resumed his chair behind the handsome mahogany desk.

‘Now, Briony,' he began pleasantly, ‘I want you to tell me as fully as possible what's been worrying you. Take your time and think carefully, mentioning anything, however unimportant it may seem to you, which might have a bearing on your illness.'

I saw her eyes widen at the word ‘illness'. Obviously she had not considered that aspect, but I was surprised at how concisely she listed for him the various instances of strangeness. It was clear she had given it all a lot of thought. She even referred back to the childhood flashes of clairvoyance which I had hoped she'd forgotten. The headaches, she said, had started about six months ago and become progressively worse. The first time she was aware of having lost consciousness was when I found her on the rug the previous week, but there had been times which were less than clear in her mind when, as she put it, she felt as though she were sleepwalking but knew she wasn't. It seemed likely that these were the occasions Mark had noticed. She hesitated fractionally when she came to the faces she had drawn and labelled ‘self-portrait' but the first real sign of agitation came as she spoke of finding herself in Scotland with no recollection of how she arrived there.

‘And I think,' she finished, ‘that I passed out for a moment or two last night, though Mother and Daddy didn't actually say so.'

Max looked across at me with raised eyebrows and I nodded slightly. I was glad that Briony's own recollections had spared me from having to disclose Mark's confidence.

Max had been making notes all this time, as had the pleasant faced woman who sat inconspicuously in a corner of the room. I noticed that she had a cassette recorder on her desk.

‘Thank you,' Max said as Briony stopped speaking. ‘That is all very clear and a great help to me. Now, is there anything else at all you can think of? Any especially vivid or recurring dreams, perhaps?'

To my surprise she flushed, glanced at me and away again. ‘There have been, yes, but I'd rather not talk about them.'

‘Very well,' Max said smoothly, ‘we'll leave that for the moment. So that's about all you can remember. I asked your mother to come in with you initially so that I could explain to both of you how we intend to set about making you better. If there's anything you don't understand, I hope that you will ask me to explain in greater detail.

‘First of all, we will start with a series of rather boring tests – I.Q., behaviour, association and so on. Then, if you are agreeable, it would probably be very helpful to try by means of hypnosis to discover the root of the trouble. That is our only way of probing the unconscious, where so much that is blocked to the waking mind can be causing disturbance.' He paused. ‘You are quite happy about hypnosis? You will trust me?'

Her eyes were fixed on his face. ‘Yes.' I felt she was half hynotised already.

‘That is very good. So often complete analysis and therefore a cure is delayed because a patient resists hypnosis, but of course there is absolutely nothing to worry about. You simply relax, and I usually end by initiating a period of normal sleep so that when you wake you will feel completely rested. You're looking tired, my dear. Have you not been sleeping very well?'

Again the guilty flush. ‘Not very.'

‘The dreams you spoke of have been disturbing you?'

‘Yes.'

Max rose to his feet. ‘Very well, Mrs Tenby. I hope you have some idea now of the way we will be working, and if you will wait in the other room Briony and I will start straight away. My assistant will remain here throughout the treatment making notes and occasionally using the recorder. At the end of the session I shall come through and have a word with you.

The waiting-room. I remember every detail of it, every swirl of pattern on the carpet. Above the mantlepiece a tank of brightly coloured tropical fish swam ceaselessly, dipping and turning with fluid grace. I watched them for a long time. Through the open window came the normal, every-day sounds of another world. A smiling girl brought me a cup of tea. There was no clock in the room, but my eyes kept returning to the seemingly unmoving hands of my watch.

It was about an hour later that Max came. He seemed tired and drained, as though a large proportion of his energy had been transferred to Briony in her trance.

I stood up. ‘Well?'

‘Sit down, Ann.' I wondered if he realised he had used my first name. There was of course no reason why he should not. He lowered himself wearily on to the sofa, his dark skin contrasting strongly with its creamy chintz. There was an abstracted look in his eyes, as though his mind had not yet fully relinquished its absorbing study of Briony's.

‘Did you find out anything?' I blurted in an agony of impatience.

‘Indeed yes. She was a perfect subject for hypnosis, needing only the slightest suggestion for everything to come pouring out.'

‘And – what did?' My lips were so dry that they kept sticking together and I had to force them apart to speak, making an odd little popping sound.

He said slowly, ‘I must confess to you that this is one of the most fascinating cases I've come across. Quite incredible. It emerged clearly under hypnosis that there are two distinct personalities present. I had suspected as much.'

‘Dual personality?' I whispered.

His black eyes darted to my face. “Yes. I mentioned it that day at your home, did I not? It is a very strange phenomenon but we are coming to believe it is far more widespread than we had realised. It could account for quite a lot of the amnesia cases we come across. However, in Briony's case it is somewhat different.'

‘How do you mean?' I asked fearfully.

‘One of the common factors in such cases is some trauma, usually in childhood, which triggers off the dissociation. Yet although Briony was so relaxed I was completely unable to find any such distress. In fact she seems a particularly happy child, well-loved and secure. Believe me, this is most unusual.'

‘There's something else, isn't there? Something else unusual?'

He smiled slightly. ‘You're very perceptive, Ann. Yes, there is something else and I have to confess I am at a loss to know how to account for it. As is usual during therapy I had regressed with her, led her back stage by stage over the years in the search for this trauma. I had found nothing and was considering regressing still further – some psychiatrists have established proof of consciousness even before birth, in the uterus – when, without any warning, she was suddenly fully adult. I was, I must admit, completely taken aback but before I could question her she cried out in a ringing voice, “I don't want to die! ” '

I stared fixedly at his face, trying to read in it what he was going to say before he said it.

‘And now we come to the difficult part. I can offer no explanation at this point, only tell you what occurred.' I nodded, unable to speak. ‘There was obviously a grown woman present, and I could not see how we had reached her. So I asked her name. She said it was Ailsa Cameron. Does the name mean anything to you?'

‘Nothing at all.'

‘This is very important, because it's the first instance of deviation. Throughout the regression I kept asking her name and her age at each of the stages. Each time she had presented herself as Briony Tenby. I presume she took your second husband's name on your marriage?'

‘Yes.' The drumming in my head remained consistent.

‘She told me that she was twenty years old and lived in a Scottish village called Drumlochhead.'

He waited for my reaction. I could only dumbly shake my head.

‘She mentioned that she was in love with a man called Jamie and that they both attended Glasgow School of Art. And there was something about a particular painting, but it was all so confused at that point that I couldn't unravel it. Perhaps when I replay the cassette – Now, it was, of course, to Scotland that Briony went last week.'

‘Yes.'

‘Has she ever shown any desire to go before?'

‘Never. Quite the reverse.' I tried to collect myself. ‘I met Lance in Scotland when she was a baby. I'd always assumed that was the reason for her obsession with everything Scottish.'

‘But I thought you said –'

‘That she didn't want to go there? That's true, and it surprised me very much. I thought she'd be delighted but she became almost hysterical when I suggested it. She kept saying something about it's not being time.'

‘Yet in her fugue she made her way straight there. Fascinating. And in that state she even assumed a Scottish identity.'

‘She? But you said there were two personalities?'

‘That is so, but although there is a plurality of systems, the normal waking self is Briony.'

I stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Then why should she assume another name?'

‘That is the usual form in such cases, to differentiate between the personalities. The only interesting point is that she should choose a different nationality from her own. I wondered whether perhaps she recollected the name from some story book she'd read as a child, where perhaps the hero and heroine were Jamie and Ailsa.'

I said aridly, ‘I've never heard of an Ailsa, but Briony's boyfriend told me she sometimes called him Jamie.'

‘Ah! So there is a positive link.'

‘Max.' I leant forward, my fingers interlinked tightly. ‘Lance has heard of Jamie, too.'

‘Lance has?'

‘Yes. I asked him if he'd ever known anyone of that name and he said – he said he had once, in another existence.'

‘Another existence?' Max repeated softly. ‘What a curious phrase to use.'

I made myself go on. ‘This Ailsa said she'd been to Glasgow School of Art?'

‘Yes.'

‘Lance was there too.'

‘But that is excellent! Your daughter's dream identity is strongly related to your husband, of whom we know she is very fond. Perhaps he mentioned this Jamie in her hearing once, and she knows he was at the art school. It could be an attempt to be closer to him which caused the deviation.'

‘Those dreams she referred to,' I said with difficulty. ‘They were about Lance, weren't they?'

‘They were.'

I couldn't ask any more about them. In any case I doubt if he would have told me. Dully I remembered Jan's amateur suggestion that Briony might have resented Lance and myself coming together. If Max were beginning to think along the same lines, it was important that he should know the true position.