Trust (37 page)

More legs ran in, more faces appeared. They were calling to him, and yelling, all of them at once.

‘Come out from under there!’

‘Finn? Are you Finn?’

‘What on earth are you doing there?’

‘Let go of her hand! Come out!
Now!
’

Finn shrank away from them, hard up against the wall, clinging to Stella-Jean’s hand. The room seemed to be full of people now, poking and pulling, trying to get him out from under the bed.

And then a strange creaky voice said, ‘Lea’ him alone.’

All those people poking at him went very, very still. Their eyes stopped looking sharp and hard at him; instead they looked at each other and one of them said very quickly, ‘What was — ?’, and another, ‘Did you — ?’

Again came the voice, more definite this time. ‘Lea’ him
alone
.’

As they stood up Finn heard those nurses call out, all at the same time: ‘Oh!’ and, ‘Oh my god!’

‘Le’ him stay,’ said Stella-Jean. She was holding his hand, and she was not letting go.

THIRTY-TWO

‘I feel
angry
,’ said Susanna, and the harsh word seemed to leave her mouth and launch itself into the therapist’s pleasant room like a … a weapon, a blunt object. Her eyes widened.
But it’s true
, she thought.
And he did ask, how do you feel?
She hoped very much that the therapist, Leigh Fermor, would not say something about anger being a normal part of the grief process, now that she and Gerry had gone through the litany of awful events which had brought them there. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I feel scared.’

‘You feel scared, as well as angry,’ said Leigh, and Susanna relaxed a little. She liked his even voice, and his way of repeating things so temperately. She’d been impressed, too, that he’d responded so quickly to the phone message she’d left on the weekend, once she found his number on Doctor Gillian’s note, and by the way he’d offered calmly to see her and Gerry as soon as possible, even after-hours. So here they were, just a few evenings after the hideous row, telling their worst secrets to a stranger. Yet there was something about this stranger – a man around her own age, with a squarish face and large wide-open hazel eyes – that seemed familiar.
It’s the way he looks at us
, she realised. The same way an artist looks at someone, or something, they were drawing: observant, but neutral. A kind of measuring curiousity.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m angry at all I’ve lost, and scared I’m going to lose more. If I lose my marriage too, I’m scared I – I’ll be —’

‘You’re
not
going to lose your marriage,’ said Gerry forcefully. ‘I don’t know why you’d even think that. I have never once considered ending our marriage.’

Leigh’s calm observant eyes turned to him. ‘Gerry, you don’t feel that your relationship with Susanna is threatened by your affairs.’

‘Not
affairs
,’ said Gerry, waving the word away. ‘That makes ’em sound more important than they were. Just little adventures.’ He was sitting at one end of the dark-brown leather couch, she at the other, while the therapist was on the other side of a low table, in an armchair. ‘No, they’re not a threat. They weren’t before Susanna knew about them, and they’re not now.’

‘But you’ve
lied
to me,’ Susanna said, swinging around to accuse him. ‘As
well
as screwing all these other women, you’ve been lying to me, for years. I still don’t know how many years. Don’t you see what that means?’

Gerry looked away from her, around the room.

Leigh wrote a few words on his notepad. ‘Gerry, can I ask you about when you first met Susanna,’ he said in his mild way. ‘What was important and unique to you about her? What were your expectations of the relationship?’

‘Well, I knew she’d be a lot different to the woman I was with before, that’s for sure! Justine.’ Gerry gave a small scornful grunt. ‘Justine was gorgeous, but completely unreliable. After the bust-up with her, I realised I didn’t need to marry somebody who was brilliant, or ambitious, or glamorous. I realised what I really wanted was a
family
. You need to understand,’ he said, leaning forward to emphasise the seriousness of his point, ‘I was really keen to have kids. People never think about a bloke wanting to have kids, but I did. That was me.’

‘You were ready to marry and start a family,’ said Leigh, ‘with the right partner.’

‘Absolutely.’ Gerry nodded emphatic confirmation. ‘After the fiasco with Justine, I decided to look for someone who wasn’t so, you know, so full of themselves. Someone who, ah … I probably shouldn’t say this, but someone who didn’t have as many options.’

There was a small silence.

‘Someone who’d be eternally grateful for your approval,’ said Susanna, with acid in her voice.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, Susanna,
please.
’

‘I kept asking myself back then, why is this incredible guy interested in
me
? Now I get it.’

‘You’re deliberately misunderstanding me. I chose you because of who
you
are, specifically.’

‘Safe. Plain.’

‘Why do you always put yourself down like that, Suze? You’re better looking than you think. It’s part of her family’s mythology,’ he told Leigh. ‘Her younger sister’s the pretty one, so Susanna’s always seen herself as the plain one – which is bullshit. The important thing is, we
both
made the right choice. Careers, good marriage, two great kids. Up until the accident, everything was fine.’

‘Everything was fine,’ repeated Susanna. There was something about Leigh Fermor’s presence, she realised, that allowed her to question Gerry’s assertions in a way she hadn’t done in years. Perhaps ever. ‘Wait a second. Our son was in despair over his sexuality, which we had no idea about, and you had a whole secret sex life going on, which
I
certainly had no idea about.’

‘Well, you only have to look at who Seb chose to come out to, don’t you, to see who
he
thought had some understanding of him.’

Susanna stared at him, suddenly confused. ‘What?’

‘You’re saying that … there’s a particular reason your son Seb first came out to you, Gerry, rather than to Susanna?’ the therapist asked.

‘Pretty obvious, isn’t it? I mean, coming out’s a big deal, and Seb did it with the parent he feels closer to. I’ve always gone that extra mile with the kids, right from the time they were born, no matter how busy I was.’

‘And you’re saying I
didn’t
?’ Susanna was shocked. ‘Wait a second. First you say everything was fine and you approved of me, now —’

‘I’m just saying that on a personal level, I was more engaged. As a parent.’

‘You’ve been a wonderful father, Gerry, no one would ever deny that. But you know, sometimes I used to listen to you laughing and playing with the kids while I was busy cooking and cleaning and getting things ready for the next day, and I used to envy you. I remember thinking, he does what he
wants
to do, and I do what
has
to be done.’

‘Oh,’ said Gerry, raising his eyebrows coolly. ‘Envy me, huh? Now the truth’s coming out. Maybe this
is
all about resentment of males. Because let’s face it, Suze, since the accident you’ve hardly been there for Seb at all.’

‘That’s not true!’ she cried. ‘Are you trying to say that because I’ve been going to see Stella-Jean every day, I haven’t —’

‘But you don’t go in there just to be with Stella, do you? What about those ghastly drawings you’ve been doing?’ Gerry turned to the therapist with a troubled expression. ‘The fact is, Leigh, that Susanna’s had a breakdown,’ he said in a sad but authoritative tone. ‘It’s totally understandable, of course. But that’s why we’re here.’

Susanna felt like she’d been slapped. What had happened to the admission her husband had made just a few days before? What had happened to
I love you, Suze
?

But Leigh Fermor looked as calm, as unfazed as ever. ‘Gerry, you feel that the traumatic events your family has undergone have resulted in a breakdown of some kind for Susanna. That’s what you’re saying? And, Susanna, can I ask you now: what do
you
feel are the issues that have brought us here?’

He actually wants to know
, Susanna realised, looking into Leigh’s impartial, interested face.
And he hasn’t talked about the grief process once
. She drew a deep breath. ‘I want to know what’s been going on. My husband has been lying to me about his sex life for years, maybe for as long as we’ve been married. When I first found out, it was just a day or two after the crash. My mother had just been killed; my kids were —’ She stopped.
Don’t cry
, she told herself.
Don’t stop: go on
. ‘And I tried to pretend that I could put it aside and just try and deal with – with everything else. But I can’t. I need to
know
. I need to know what he’s really been doing, and with whom, and
why
.’

She and the therapist had been holding each other’s gaze while she spoke. Now, both turned to Gerry. His face was turned away, twisting his lower lip between thumb and forefinger as he stared out of the window.

‘Gerry?’ said Leigh mildly.

He moved restlessly in his seat, crossed his right ankle over his left knee, put the leg down again. ‘Yes, I’ve had occasional adventures,’ he said to Susanna. ‘But I keep telling you,
they’re not important.
What’s important is our family. Can’t you see that we have to stick together, at a time like this? Help each other, not tear each other down. How on earth do you think that sneaking off to this hidey-hole you’ve set up —’ He broke off and turned to Leigh. ‘She’s gone and rented a studio, for god’s sake. At a time like this, she’s drawing these
comics
, full of gruesome, violent, man-hating images …’ Gerry paused just long enough to draw a deep accusatory breath. ‘And
then
, after she’d finally shown me these things the other night, she turned on me! Attacked me, physically!’ He subsided, slowly shaking his head. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this but – Susanna’s sick. I’m frightened for her, I really am.’

Leigh wrote in his notes for a minute or two. It struck Susanna as distantly amusing that, despite all their animosity, pain and protest she and Gerry both waited dutifully for the therapist’s attention before continuing. Finally he rested his pen. ‘Gerry, I’d like to talk about secrets, and privacy,’ he said. ‘Do you feel, for example, that your having sex with other women equates to Susanna not showing you her drawings?’

Gerry’s expression said
yes
, but then he reconsidered. ‘Well,’ he said cautiously, ‘not precisely, maybe. But the point is: yes, she keeps secrets too.’

‘I know you don’t approve of my drawings,’ Susanna said, ‘but, Gerry, they aren’t an attack on you. They’re … they’re something I
have
to do.’ She heard the note of pleading in her voice, and suddenly recognised how much she needed him to accept them, accept her creating them.
They come from my deepest, darkest place
, she cried out to him in her heart.
If you could hold my hand while I go there, while I come back, we could be all right.

‘Oh, and if you
have
to do something, then it’s okay?’ said Gerry with a corner of his upper lip curled. ‘What if I
have
to screw someone, is that okay too?’

She slumped back in her chair, wounded. ‘How can you be so crass?’

‘Susanna; Gerry,’ said Leigh, summoning their attention. Obediently, the two of them sat up straight on the couch. ‘There’s a couple of phrases I’ve heard each of you use, which I think it would be worth examining. I’d like to spend the time we have remaining in this session unpacking them.’

With lifted eyebrows, he asked for their agreement, and they gave it, nodding and settling. ‘Susanna, you’ve talked about approval several times, or being approved of.’ Leigh paused; she nodded again. ‘It seems to be important. Can we talk about approval, and what it means to you?’

Gerry crossed his arms and leaned back, watching his wife closely.

‘Approval …’ she said hesitantly. ‘Well, it – it underpins everything, doesn’t it? How people get along … their values …’

‘Approval is the underpinning, the foundation perhaps, of personal relationships,’ said Leigh. ‘That’s how you see it, Susanna?’

‘Well, yes,’ she said.
Isn’t it obvious?
She tilted her head as she asked the therapist silently for confirmation. ‘It’s one of the first things you learn, as a child. My mother approved of what I did when I was good, and that’s how I learned to be good.’

‘So being good, and therefore approved of, is very important?’

‘Of course! And I
have
– I’ve been a good wife, a good mother, good daughter, good sister. And a good teacher. Or at least, I’ve tried to be.’

With gentle gravity, Leigh asked, ‘Can you tell me what a relationship would be like, in which approval didn’t matter?’

Susanna looked taken aback. ‘Well, it wouldn’t be much of a relationship, would it? If you don’t care whether someone approves of you, then it means you don’t care much about
them
.’ This seemed so self-evident, she wondered if perhaps it was a trick question. ‘How else would people show their … love?’

A little silence stood in the room, waiting, and Susanna saw that Leigh was about to suggest another possibility.

‘Can you imagine a loving relationship in which approval was not a prerequisite?’ he asked.

She wanted to say yes, because she had the sense that was the better answer.
The answer he would approve of
, she realised. Slowly, she shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not for me. I – need it … too much.’

Leigh smiled, without judgement or demand. Susanna glanced quickly at Gerry, and was surprised to see the interest and – was it concern? – in his face, his eyes. Softly, into the fecund silence, she said, ‘I needed Mum’s approval like I needed air, or food. I’ve grown up assuming it was as necessary as … love. Or that it
is
love.’