Sedating Elaine, page 16
“Excellent!”
“Yes. Although I think I might have gotten worse.”
His eyes flickered back to the computer screen. It was like they were drawn there in moments of difficulty.
“Worse? How so?” he said.
“Well, I think I might have become a bit, sort of, unhinged. I’m worried, about myself. I’m hurting my girlfriend, you see—”
“Ah, I understand.” He nodded slowly, wisely.
“Do you?” Frances was willing to believe anyone could understand. She was completely open to the idea of empathy, to telepathy, even.
“Yes, you’re feeling bad because you’ve hurt your girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve upset her? Had a row?”
“No, not exactly—”
“You’re feeling anxious? Depressed?”
“No. Yes. Kind of. I don’t know, to be honest. I feel like I need some sort of assessment.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Mental health? Mental disorders?”
“Because you’ve upset your girlfriend?”
“Upset is the wrong word.”
“What is the right word?”
“I don’t know.” She pondered for a moment, then shrugged. “I can’t say.”
“You can’t say because you don’t know?”
“No. I know. But I can’t say because I can’t face what I know, you know?”
He rubbed his forehead beneath an impossible curl of hair and she realised with sudden and unnecessary embarrassment what it was about him that was so very different: He was wearing a toupee. The obviousness of it—like a cutting of faux fur that had been Hoopla’d onto his head—made her wonder how she hadn’t noticed it the moment she walked in; she certainly couldn’t mistake it now. Quite the opposite: She couldn’t take her eyes off it. It was a worrying example of how wrapped up in herself she’d become. In fact, as if this weren’t absurd enough, a hundred tweaks and changes appeared at once: his withdrawn waistline, his neatly ironed shirt, the smell of cigars replaced with an eye-watering eau de cologne. A waistcoat. Elbow patches. He looked like an actor playing the part of landed gentry just returned from hunting. A wedding band still choked his ring finger. There was but one obvious conclusion: His wife had returned.
Did he look happier? She couldn’t quite tell. But certainly, within the tightened, neatened, weird bewigged look of him there came some other result, the buttoning up and pinning down that is so suggestive of an animal tamed. Willingly so, perhaps, but tamed, nevertheless. As Frances sat there staring and staring, the doctor became aware of it, coughed a little, and shifted around in his seat. Caught out, figured out, revealed, as it were. He began to nervously run his hand down his tie in his usual habit, but was halted by its disappearance beneath the waistcoat, so he resorted to gently stroking his belly a little instead, then cleared his throat, smiled, and said, “Let’s approach this differently, shall we?” He settled his face into an expression of calmness and openness, and said, “Start again.”
A tiny, repetitive sound caught her attention: Beneath the table, his foot tap-tap-tapped.
“Okay,” Frances said. She took a deep breath. “I have drugged my girlfriend, and that’s not an exaggeration or a metaphor, but a fact. I have spiked her drinks and she’s currently unconscious in my flat. When she has occasionally woken up, sometimes she slurs, sometimes she talks nonsense. I had to do it, though. I needed the money, and I haven’t even got that now. I just wanted a break, really, you understand, a bit of goddamned peace. I didn’t know what else to do. It all made sense at the time.”
This was what she wanted to say. In the event, however, she just mumbled, “I think I’m mad.”
The doctor shook his head side to side and said, “You’re not mad. It’s part of life to argue with each other, to have stress; it’s unpleasant but perfectly normal. People bicker, quarrel, fall out, make up. It’s just how it goes sometimes,” and he smiled softly again with an air of would-be smugness diminished only by the absurdity of his appearance.
“For fuck’s sake,” she snapped. “It’s not a bicker. Will you stop being so dismissive? Something is seriously wrong.”
“With your girlfriend?”
“No! With me!”
“But you said you’d upset her. I thought you meant—”
“Okay, both of us, then.”
He rocked back in his chair and pursed his lips apologetically. “I’m not a relationship counsellor,” he said.
Frances groaned.
“But,” he continued, “I can help you if you tell me what is actually wrong with you. You are anxious, yes?”
“Well, yes, obviously.”
“Right!” He looked pleased. “I can give you something for that.” He began to type.
“That wasn’t really why I came here.”
“Hmm?” He wasn’t listening. He was concentrating on his typing.
“I wanted to tell you something. A secret. I just wanted to tell someone, to get it off my chest. It’s building up in there like a huge pressure and I need to get it out.”
“Anything you say is confidential in here,” he said, merrily tippy-tapping away.
She waited. Eventually he stopped and looked at her. She opened and closed her mouth several times, then pushed her fingers through her hair. “I can’t” was all that she said. “Fuck. I can’t.”
He smiled and smiled and typed. He looked ever so cheery. “Baby steps,” he said to Frances. “Just take baby steps. Talk to your girlfriend. Be kind to yourself and maybe practice meditation, some breathing exercises.” He didn’t personally believe in any of that mumbo-jumbo but they were encouraged to suggest it these days. When all else fails, there’s always spiritual hippie stuff to give a little false hope.
Frances felt this had been a waste of time. She’d hoped to get the miserable, sympathetic doctor; instead she’d gotten some usurper who was two steps away from suggesting she light candles and start chanting, a man who—if his clothing was anything to go by—was a total lunatic himself. She wondered why she’d bothered to come here. But then she suddenly noticed a slight twitch in his movements: Beneath the desk his leg was bouncing away like it was part of an Irish jig.
She felt sorry for him, differently this time. Reunited with his wife, clearly, but look at the result. What on earth do they do to us, these people that we love? He was not himself; he was a crash test dummy strapped into his life, unable to change direction or apply the brakes, all because he loved someone, which meant they had control of the car, the speed, the end result. One day he might wake up, drag himself out of the wreckage for good, but as Frances knew all too well, he’d be so mangled and damaged by then, he might well wish he’d waited ’til it went up in flames. He was still beaming away and Frances began to see it as an expression not of happiness, but the fixed grin of blind optimism hoping to God everything would be okay. She realised, sadly, that the similarity and empathy which had existed between them before was gone, and there was very little he could do or say to help her now, trapped as he was in this new persona. Still a doctor, of course, and just about able to function as one, but his ability to reach her as another human being was locked away beneath the pocket of his suit jacket. As if to prove the point he said, “Shall we try you on some antianxiety tablets, and the therapy again?”
She sighed. “Group therapy isn’t for me, Doctor.”
“The medication?”
Frances huffed and stood up to leave. She thought he was the one who needed medication.
“Are you sure you want to leave? I might be able to recommend some charities to call.” He faffed about beneath the papers on his desk. Frances paused with her hand on the door and looked back so as not to be rude. Eventually he produced a pamphlet for the Samaritans, which he held out. Frances looked down at it, then him, then opened the door. “Would you like to book another appointment, for a couple of weeks’ time? We can catch up and see how you’re doing,” he said, and she stopped in the doorway.
“No,” she said. “I’ll be alright.”
“Goodbye, then. And take it easy.”
“Yes. Thanks. Bye, then.”
And he continued to smile an almost demented smile, as if something might be about to erupt out of him, as if he might tear the toupee from his head and rip all his clothes off and roar. He began to type randomly, just punching furiously into the keyboard. From the doorway, Frances could see both legs now, dancing away. He looked like a mallard, plump and proud above the surface of the desk, feet flapping about beneath it. Strange to think he was one complete person, as if he had been given someone else’s legs.
“Goodbye!” he said again and waved, a gesture both of them knew was ridiculous.
In the car park, lighting up, she almost didn’t recognise his car; it too had undergone a transformation. Gleaming and glimmering, as shiny as all the others, an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror, the seats spotless and smart. But, like him, it was vaguely unsettling: the urgency in the skewed parking, the duster balled up on the dashboard, the slight dent in the door, which, when put together, suggested some small but permanent sense of panic. And, on reflection, as she considered his appearance, his words, his demeanour, she recognised the one person she knew most of all, knew better than anyone, knew as herself and most other people as well: a liar. A liar trapped in lies, living lies, enacting lies, trying to convince themselves it is all reality. Shut away in the box of his office, playing the parts of his life. He had a way to go before it could be considered convincing. Frances could have taught him a thing or two. Walking away, she was passed by a woman she recognised from the waiting room. She snatched at the hand of the little boy in dungarees, dragging him away, running late for something, as the boy looked back over his shoulder at her, smiling.
9
Lies. Let us talk about lies. Let us talk about these words, thoughts, and actions which are the deceptive contradictions—but sometimes the greatest truths—of ourselves.
When Frances was a little girl, she told lies, like any little girl does. And, like those other little girls, her lies were usually of the trivial kind. A stolen satsuma at lunch time, a denial amongst the broken remnants of a teapot, feigned ignorance at muddy shoes and torn clothes. She knew she needn’t lie, and that lying was bad, but she lied nonetheless, and did so regularly enough that she didn’t notice it. Lying was, to her, no different to playing make-believe, just another layer to the game of Families, where she’d boss around her invisible children and scold her invisible husband, playing the role of her unavailable, unreachable mother. The only difference between her and the other little girls was that throughout the day, the game vividly continued.
From too much time spent alone, her imagination bled into her reality until she could co-exist quite comfortably in both places simultaneously. At school, teachers grew exasperated with her lack of focus and attention; only reading and drawing interested her, her other workbooks filled with sketches and doodles or snippets of stories. More often than not she was to be seen with her cheek slumped against her fist, chewing on the end of a pencil or a tatter of hair. She was not naughty, just vacant. And as she caused no real bother—and Lord knows the teachers had their hands full enough with the ones who did—they all resigned to giving up on her. They’d drag her through the curriculum, ensure she’d pass tests, shrug their shoulders at average effort and average grades, teach, in other words, just enough to prove she wasn’t an idiot and they were doing the best they could with her. There was enough to cope with, between the bickering and hair-pulling and raucous energy of the other children; to have one sit quietly daydreaming was, in many respects, a godsend. And if, perhaps, some time had been taken to talk softly with her and ask about her thoughts, her feelings, her problems, they might have discovered some potential there. But they didn’t.
It would be difficult, as an adult, for her to recall what she dreamt about then; her childhood seemed like a poorly-remembered and patchy dream heightened at intervals with moments of emotion. The relief when her father came home, the sadness and resentment and jealousy of other girls hand-in-hand with their mothers, and the anger which reared up from nowhere, and just as swiftly went. She knew from insinuations at school and the books she read that there was a boyish quality to her actions and reactions—not only the rough and tumble but the swiftness of her temper, which frightened other children. This was why teachers said to “leave her alone,” because when she was alone she was calm and thoughtful and not scary. Her fantasyland was difficult to recall because it was not exuberant or memorable in any way; it was not pirates or castles or magic dragons. Hers were the daydreams of other people’s normalities, and this was why fact and fiction so neatly overlapped.
She had a make-believe mother. She walked home from school beside her, a mother of her own imagining, who always asked about her day, always wanted to know what she’d done, always listened. Her make-believe mother was strict, like the other mothers, and sometimes scolded her if her hair was grotty or if she dawdled, but she also told her she loved her, she was proud, she was a clever little girl. She didn’t realise it but her make-believe mother was in fact the actress Sharon Maughan, from the Gold Blend advert; she was the prettiest and most enviable of all the mothers. Frances looked up at her devotedly as they walked along home. At the ice cream van she would always ask if she could have a Popeye, but her mother said no, it was bad for you, and they’d be having tea soon anyway. At this point Frances would start to skip ahead, and her mother would call for her to be careful and wait for her at the corner of the road.
Her father was a lorry driver—that was all that she knew. More often than not, as she swung in through the back door and shouted, “Hello,” he wouldn’t be there, but she always shouted it nevertheless. Coins and bread would be left on the sideboard, and she’d look into the under-stairs cupboard to check for his coat and hat; if they were gone, then so was he. On occasion she’d find them there, then stand at the foot of the stairs to listen for the sound of him wheezing in his sleep. She was always quiet, regardless; if he was home she did not want to wake him, and if he wasn’t she did not want to feel the silence come back at her. In the kitchen, she put on an apron. The daydream shifted here to her being the mother. Her imaginary daughter would sit in the chair, swinging her feet, as Frances buttered bread and wrenched the lid from the jam jar, licking the knife clean afterwards, placing the sandwich on her round brown plate. When she ate it, she was the daughter again. And so this pattern continued throughout the day, this habit of switching from mother to daughter, filling the bathtub as mother, climbing in as daughter, pulling the bedsheets back as mother, settling in as daughter, hearing her mother’s voice in her head, telling a story, “You saved my life the other night.” She fell asleep with the sheets wrapped round her as tight as a mother’s arms.
Loneliness was never an issue because they were inseparable. And nobody could have known it, but her sense of right and wrong came not from teachers or her father, but the voice and expressions of Sharon Maughan, praising her when she was good and frowning when she was bad. It was this make-believe mother who stopped her hand reaching for loose change when the ice cream van warbled demandingly into the street. It was she who turned Frances’ head away from another girl’s test sheet at school. It was she who patted her wrist at petty playground acts of revenge.
“Don’t be mean to them just because they are mean to you,” she said.
In a very true and literal sense she feared displeasing her make-believe mother more than anything.
Each day she left the classroom last, slowly packing away her books and pencils, listening to the cheery rabble being gathered up and led away, before she hoisted her heavy bag up and took a mental picture of the scene. The teachers would see her and exchange silent, pitying looks, wishing a mother would miraculously appear. They did not realise this was her happiest time of day, nor that their pity would have been better spent during the friendless lunches. She looked forward to leaving. When the crowd cleared and all other children had been ushered away, Frances ran out to meet her make-believe mother beneath the tree. In a white blouse and beige skirt, her mother would raise her hand high and wave a big side-to-side arc as if painting a rainbow in the sky, then crouch down slightly and open her arms wide. Off they went, alone, together. There had to be somewhere to put the love, you see. Just because her mother wasn’t there didn’t mean Frances didn’t have the love to give. Children are experts at coping and making do.
Their house was a mid terrace down a sloping cul-de-sac street, filled with sounds of neighbouring children throwing balls and riding bikes. To the rear of the house was a long, thin garden, lined on either side with hedges and trees, which slid off to a narrow ditch. This ditch cut across the lawn like a gash in the earth, slashing either side through the neighbouring land, to some unfathomable source several miles away. The width and depth of a tallish man, it filled with water in the winter and nettles in the summer, huge, unstoppable things which grew dark and dangerous to the flat of the land, so that from the house the ditch seemed to have disappeared altogether, just a black shadow replacing it. Beyond was a small patch of grass, a short extension of the garden, just big enough for a few trees and a shed. Two wobbly planks of wood, laid by Frances when she was big enough to drag them, acted as a bridge, from one side to the other.
Down the rabbit hole, through the wardrobe, up the beanstalk, over the bridge. Here was the passageway to wonder, to Frances’ secret, special land. Nothing more than the shabby grass and old sloping shed, unused by her father or a gardener, yet here the improvisations and imaginations of childhood occurred in all their wildness, undisturbed and unhindered by teachers and grown-ups and the demands of the world. A doll strapped to a lawnmower as a makeshift pram, rows of nails standing on their heads acting as a circus, trowels and pitchforks played with as weapons ready to defend the realm. She was a princess, her mother a queen, the shed was a castle, the ditch was their moat. Fairy-tale happenings could occur here away from the necessary business of cleaning and washing and working. Here, she was alone, yet had more company than anywhere else in the entire world. Beyond the shed and grass, over a thin wire fence, stretched a vast golden cornfield that spilled away like a lake of honey. Frances would sometimes climb a ladder, carefully propped against the shed wall, and sit on the roof, watching it, spotting kestrels and deer, gazing across to the blue crust of horizon, which was in fact the sea. Once or twice as she perched there she felt the imagined wriggling of fingers up her spine and looked over her shoulder to see her father in the upstairs window of the house. They observed each other across this chasm like two strangers in separate houses, then each flicked a hand in the air and turned away. This was how it was between them. Tokens of attention slipped from him, generally as money on the kitchen counter, or a pat on the head, or a nod from afar. These unspoken acts of communication were less satisfying than those with her make-believe mother because, as a real human being, she couldn’t help expecting more from him, like actual words. But at school they had learnt to be grateful so she kept such selfish whimsies to herself and accepted that, when it came to paternal love, this was as good as it was going to get: not completely absent, just painfully awkward and unmentionable, living around rather than with each other, a cohabitation of upstairs thuds, scattered coins, and distant glances. Had he only tried—only crossed the ditch once—he might have gained better understanding of his daughter and bridged a gap between them. He might also have noticed that the ditch was dangerous, the bridge unsteady, a disaster possible, even likely. But he didn’t, and so by the time he learnt all this it would be too late, and his daughter would carry a burden he had no idea about, believing it to be his instead.
